LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Clia 



\uJZ 



^Copyright No. 



Shelf 



AiS T 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



GOOD TIDINGS 



^COMPILED BY 

Q. H. SHINN, D.D. 



eieP 



UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 

BOSTON AND CHICAGO 

1900 






±8778 



LibrMry of Coocir^s? 
1W0 CtlflES RtCfJVEO 

JUL 12 1900 

Copyright wtry 

SECOND COPY. 

Delivered to 

ORDLrt DIVISION, 

mi is imp 



Copyright, 1900, by 
UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 



7104? 



DeDtcateD 

TO THE MEMORY OF 
MRS. MARY T. GODDARD 



PREFACE. 



It is evident to every worker in the mission field of 
the Universalist Church that a publication is needed ex- 
plaining the Universalist faith, that can be sent by mail 
at a small cost. While leaflet literature is doing good, it 
requires many tracts to make clear the different phases 
of our faith. This little book contains eight sermons, 
doctrinal and practical, in which nearly all our doctrines 
are clearly set forth. They were preached at Saratoga 
Springs, N.Y., July 30- August 6, 1899, on the occasion 
of the Eighteenth Universalist summer meeting held six- 
teen years at "The Weirs," N.H., and two years at 
Saratoga. Of course these discourses were prepared 
to preach and not to be printed in a book, which should 
be remembered by the reader. As " Good Tidings" is 
designed more for laymen than ministers, I have added 
the splendid address of Mr. Charles L. Hutchinson, presi- 
dent of the Universalist General Convention ; and 
extracts from Mrs. Goddard's letters, as explained in 
connection with the letters in the closing chapter of this 
work. It is scarcely necessary to tell our people why L 
desired a sermon on capital punishment. A church hav- 
ing for its foundation the law of love, which returns good 

5 



6 PRE FA CE. 

for evil, will not have discharged its full duty until the 
death penalty is abolished. Consequently a great re- 
sponsibility rests upon every Universalist to work for 
this end. To our post-office mission literature this book 
is added, in the belief that it will carry light and joy to 

many darkened souls. 

Q. H. Shinn. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

i. The Gospel for To-day n 

Rev. Frederick A. Bisbee, D.D. 

2. Universalist Belief in God 24 

W. S. Crowe, D.D., Saratoga, 1899. 

3. The Continuity of Life 36 

Hiram \V. Thomas, D.D. 

4. Universalism and the Bible 47 

Edwin C. Sweetser, D.D. 

5. Affirmations of Universalism 68 

Rev. Q. H. Shinn, D.D. 

6. Some Thoughts of a Business Man Concerning the 

Church 90 

Charles L. Hutchinson. 

7. Capital Punishment I0 4 

Rev. Charles H. Puffer. 

8. Universalism for the "World : -.r 

George L. Perix. 

9. The Contribution of Universalism to the World's 

Faith Hg 

James M. Pullman, D.D. 

10. Letters T r 7 

Mrs. Mary T. Goddard. 



What then is freedom's limit, where its end — 
This precious boon by Heaven bestowed on men, 
This priceless right to every creature dear ? 
What in the last analysis but this : 
Each power and faculty divinely given 
In fullest scope to use and to enjoy, 
Within the metes and bounds that God has set ! 
Has He full license given to erring men ? 
Would he bestow upon us unchecked power 
Ourselves to ruin, His own work to spoil, 
Himself to mock, His purpose to defeat ? 
Here is our limit, here our freedom ends — 
Man may climb high, but cannot God dethrone. 
God is still sovereign and His rule supreme. 

From Christus Victor by Henry N. Dodge. 



THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 

REV. FREDERICK A. BISBEE, D. D. 
" I declare unto you the Gospel." — i Corinthians xv. i. 

Christianity is not dead ; it lives and grows, and 
therefore, the accurate definition of one age is inadequate 
for the next. Antiquity in and of itself is neither a proof 
of truth nor falsehood. All that one age possesses may 
be true, but it is not all of truth. 

The introduction of different books into the lives of 
children at different stages of their intellectual develop- 
ment is not unlike the introduction of different revela- 
tions of truth into the life of humanity. The written and 
the unwritten history of man shows a slow but constant 
development, culminating in this most glorious age of 
civilization and of progress ; the fruit of the past, the seed 
of the future. All along through the past successive 
eras have been made and marked by the introduction of 
those elements which go to make up the type of life 
which belongs to to-day. 

There was a time, no doubt, when man was but little 
more than an animal, having physical strength whose 
action was prompted by instinct. Then came a time 
when instinct was supplemented or superseded by intelli- 
gence. Still later, out of the needs of men, was devel- 
oped some degree of social life that involved at once 



12 THE GOSPEL EOR TO-DAY. 

moral relations. As time passed on, as it is with the 
child who, having passed the elementary stage of knowl- 
edge, has placed in his hands a book teaching the combi- 
nation of these elements into sentences or problems that 
reveal new truths, so man having reached a certain stage, 
there was introduced into, or developed out of, life a new 
element which we have called religion. The physical 
gave man a certain range of liberty, the intellectual en- 
larged that range, the social and moral gave him a pass- 
port to the ends of the earth ; then came the religious, ' 
bridging time and space, and opening to him the realm 
of the infinite. 

Within a comparatively recent period, taking into con- 
sideration the whole vast sweep of human history, a new 
element has been introduced into the world. It arose in 
an obscure place in one of the provinces of Rome, and 
took personal form in a comparatively unknown man 
named Jesus. This force, for want of a better name, has 
been called spiritual ; something that is intangible, yet 
real. It was not introduced with any flourish of trum- 
pets ; there was no attempt on the part of Jesus to gain 
notoriety; he wished only to quietly introduce his truth 
as a seed into the world where it was to grow. And 
through great suffering and noble self-sacrifice he instilled 
that truth into the lives of a few humble men ; they gave 
it to others ; and as the waves upon the lake formed by 
the falling pebble spread wider and wider until they touch 
the shores on every side, so has his truth spread, each 
year its diameter increasing until it needs not the eye of 
inspired prophecy, but only that of common intelligence, 
to see in the future the time when the whole human race 
shall come within the circle of its influence ; for two rea- 



THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 1 3 

sons, because men are drawing nearer to each other, and 
the circle of truth is ever growing larger. 

The question arises in every thoughtful mind, What 
was the nature of this new element of life introduced into 
the world through Christ ? 

Recognizing him as its source, a word has been coined 
which is comprehensive enough to include the whole sub- 
ject, and at the same time do him honor; and we come to 
question the nature of Christianity. 

I come to declare unto you the Gospel as I under- 
stand it. 

I declare it with no other authority than that of com- 
mon sense and reverent and earnest study, excepting the 
authority we can all claim as our inheritance from the 
past. Man of to-day is the sum of all other men. This 
age has a better right to pronounce upon the canon of 
the Bible than any preceding age. To-day's interpreta- 
tion of Scripture is of more worth than that of fifteen 
hundred years ago ; yet to-morrow's interpretation will be 
of more worth than that of to-day. We are not the end ; 
we do not know all truth, even though all we know be 
true. 

There are certain views of Christianity which satisfy 
the demands of our reason and the longing of our hearts. 
Truth never changes, but there are a good many ways of 
looking at and applying it. If God has spoken unto men 
through this Bible, there is no contradiction between what 
He says here and what He is saying out there where the 
face of nature flushes with the inflowing life of spring, or 
what He is saying within our own minds and hearts. The 
words of this book are nothing but the vessels in which 
truth is brought to us. They are not the important thing, 



14 THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 

but the truth they bring. You can pour the truth from 
one vessel into another ; from the Greek into the Latin, 
from the Latin into the German, from the German into 
the English, it does not change the truth. We should 
come to look upon this book, not as so many square 
inches or pounds of truth, but as the vessel containing 
something that is true, which the world needs for its 
nourishment. And the gospel I declare unto you is that 
which the best sentiment and the best scholarship has 
gathered from this vessel of God's love. 

The great mistake of men and centuries has been made 
in thinking, "We are the people, and wisdom will die 
with us." The little child is just as sure that he is right 
and his father is wrong, as the grown-up child is sure that 
he is right and God is wrong. The beginning of all 
knowledge is the consciousness of ignorance. The world 
grows wise so slowly because it thinks it knows so much 
it cannot learn. The theologian who would dictate his 
ideas to all ages as the whole truth is as foolish as the 
agnostic, who knows he don't know anything. 

Christianity is the truth, not new truth, — there is no 
such thing ; all truth is as old as God. Down through 
the years there has come to us this great book in various 
forms. We look backward, and find that it has been as 
a stream starting from a spring among the mountains 
and flowing down through changing scenes. It has nour- 
ished human life until humanity has grown more loving, 
become more and more united, and gives promise of the 
time at last, when there is to be one family in heaven and 
earth. 

But men have come to this stream of living water, and 
dipped from it a little cupful of its waters, and then said 



THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 1 5 

they had it all, and whoever thirsted must come to them 
for drink. They have taken words and isolated sen- 
tences, and made them the foundation of great theories 
that but mis-represent the spirit of Jesus. 

We do not quarrel about the essentials of Christianity. 
We all believe in God ; that Jesus reveals him ; that Jesus 
reveals human life in his own life and teachings ; that 
goodness is better than sin ; that virtue carries with it a 
reward, and sin an inevitable punishment. And yet the 
-Christian world is split into many fragments over non- 
essential things. Some will not drink of the spirit of 
Christ unless it come to them in the golden cup of cere- 
monial and of form ; others will not drink save from one 
marked by sadness and gloom ; some must hide their reli- 
gion away in the best room of life, as they do their family 
Bibles, never to be taken out save on special occasion 
of funeral. Men worship the Bible, men worship the 
church, men worship even the minister sometimes. All 
these are nothing but the shuck in which is the kernel of 
truth the world needs for its nourishment. 

This kernel is the Gospel of Jesus, which I look upon 
as a natural and practical and educational force in the 
development of the children of God into His likeness. 

We are here for growth ; this is not simply a stopping- 
place while we wait to be transferred to a heaven of 
celestial glory ; the image of the earthy is a necessary 
precedent of the image of the heavenly — for us. This 
world is the primary school of our spiritual education ; 
it is the vestibule of the temple of life ; it is the beginning 
of a life infinite in possibility and eternal in duration. 
We cannot have the infinity and eternity without the 
finite and without time, any more than we can get into 



l6 THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 

the temple excepting through the vestibule, or into the 
university without the primary school or its equivalent. 

We look upon the infinite number of our powers, and 
seeing but one or two developed, how is it possible to 
think of life as being complete here ? Men go high 
only to discover greater heights beyond. The wisest 
man in the world feels that he is much farther from 
wisdom than does the little child just learning the alpha- 
bet of knowledge ; the best man feels that goodness , is 
much higher above him than he is above other men ; and 
in the thought of the vastness of human possibility, our 
conceptions are so enlarged that we come to realize a 
sense of our needs, of our incompleteness ; and the 
Christian religion is nothing more nor less than the school 
in which these common needs are supplied. 

We need the truth of spiritual things, but in our weak- 
ness we are unable to comprehend it when it comes to us 
in an abstract form ; we need it personified ; we not only 
want to hear it, we want to see it. God recognized this 
great fact in human life, — the fact we are just beginning 
to recognize in all our educational theories, — and not only 
sent us the truth, but gave it material form, so men could 
bring their senses to bear upon it. Jesus is God's illus- 
tration of his truth; Jesus is God's object lesson in this 
kindergarten world where we are all little scholars. 

A Christian life means a life like that of Jesus, — a life 
in which the religious element is always visible, not by 
the number and loudness of its prayers, not by the 
sanctimoniousness of the countenance, not by the variety 
and mystery of its doctrines, but by the honesty, purity, 
sweetness, manliness, and Christliness of the character, 
by the goodness manifest towards others, and by the 
reverence and love towards God. 



THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 1 7 

It is gratifying to note that to-day throughout the 
Christian world there are being presented new and better 
views of Christ and his religion. The old views have 
done their work ; while men were material in their 
thought and crude in their sentiments, they demanded 
that whatever was presented to them take material form ; 
they thought they must have a physical heaven for re- 
ward and a physical hell for punishment; but with the 
uplifted and enlarged and spiritualized life, for which 
.Christianity is itself responsible, these things no longer 
satisfy. 

Jesus had the same life to live that we have, the same 
passions to contend with, the same adverse circumstances 
to overcome, the same difficulties to encounter, yet he 
lived a perfect life and died a perfect death ; he succeeded 
where we fail ; that is the difference between Jesus and 
us. What was the power which enabled him to live that 
life and die that death ? Whatever it was is Christianity. 
Christianity is simply the secret of the perfect life of 
Jesus. Now, are we to think that Jesus lived that life 
because he believed in the trinity, in the atonement, in 
total depravity, in verbal inspiration, in eternal suffering, 
in the Westminster or even Winchester Confession of 
Faith ? I think not. 

The Gospel of Christ is in this world to produce now 
just such lives as Jesus lived then, and just in proportion 
as we approach unto his perfections are we saved ; just 
as we drink of the spirit which nourished him, so shall 
we grow into his likeness. 

The object of religion is not only to produce future 
angels but present men : we must have the men before 
we can have the angels. 



1 8 THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 

I do not in the slightest degree remove the sense of 
value of the future ; I would not have any one leave it 
out of the calculations of his life ; but I feel that there is 
no possible preparation for the future other than taking 
these steps of earth in the footprints of the Master, and 
there is no work that religion can do so in harmony with 
its nature as the improvement of life here and now. 

Witness the shifting of this great force of religion ; 
heretofore it has been directed towards God. It was 
thought God was angry and must be placated ; and all 
sorts of ceremonies have been performed and prayers 
said, thinking it would please God and change His dis- 
position, — make Him good-natured. We are coming to 
recognize that if there be a God at all, He is God, and 
therefore perfect, and does not need any amendment we 
can offer to His constitution. 

But looking about the world, we discover the need is 
here in men. We want the change, not God ; and so we 
learn that religion is no longer man's method of changing 
the disposition of God, but God's method of improving 
the character of man ; and its work is right here and now. 

Christianity has been flattering itself on its growth. 
It is a matter of statistics that in the country towns over 
fifty per-cent of the population do not attend church, and 
in the cities the showing is even worse. What is the 
difficulty ? Have they outgrown the gospel ? Not at all ; 
but they have been growing, and have outgrown the old 
definitions and old methods and old doctrines, just as the 
child outgrows his primer in the growth of his education. 

Men may try to revive the old, but its time has passed. 
If the religion of Jesus Christ has been of any use, of 
any effect upon the world, during the past nineteen hun- 



THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 19 

dred years, — and who shall question it ? — if through 
the influence of the Christ-life upon men, mankind has 
been uplifted nearer to his level so as to see more nearly 
from his point of view, then the world is more competent 
to-day to j udge of him and of his religion than ever before. 
Nearness to Christ, not in point of time and space, but 
in character-likeness, is what gives authority to speak of 
him. 

Men recognize and welcome progress in every other 
field of life, why not in religion ? I believe in progress 
in religion, — progress not away from Christ but towards 
Christ. It was the old idea that the past was way up 
there alongside of Christ, and has been sloping downward 
ever since into the awful conditions of to-day. But it is 
just the other way. The past was way down there in the 
depths of barbarism ; and the slope has been upward all 
the time to us, and on towards Christ, and we are a long 
ways off yet. 

We do not want the mechanical tools and the medicines 
of our fathers, why should we want the theology ? But 
it will be said, "That is the truth, and truth never 
changes." That is true, but our views of it change some- 
times if we know enough. Electricity was a force one 
hundred years ago ; electricity has not changed, but we 
have, — we know more about its nature and its application. 
So with the truth of Jesus Christ, it has not changed, 
but through its influence upon the world, the world has 
changed, been uplifted by it, to it, and therefore knows 
more of it. 

Electricity was once the flash of God's wrath, to-day it 
is the servant of man. Christianity was once the scheme 
for getting around God, and getting into a heaven we did 



20 THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 

not deserve; now it is simply God's natural method of 
developing the moral and spiritual nature of man, and 
bringing out the image of God which has been implanted 
in every human soul. And its work is with men, here in 
this world. 

Religious progress demands change in method and 
doctrine. We must give to the thinking men of to-day 
something to think about, something to act upon, — a 
religion that is simple, practical, reasonable, that proceeds 
in natural methods to the natural development of the 
moral and spiritual man. With such a conception the 
Christian church will find the limit of its growth not this 
side of the whole of humanity. 

But instead of doing this divine work, churches have 
been quarreling over non-essential distinctions. Ages 
have been spent in trying to determine whether Jesus 
Christ came down from heaven or was developed from 
earth. A question of vast and vital importance, and 
worthy of the profound research of students and the rev- 
erent meditation of theologians; but for the practical ser- 
vice of the gospel to a needy world, churches have 
been like two men who were wandering in a deep valley, 
and became lost amid the tangled underbrush which hid 
their way; and when they were in despair at their lost 
condition, they looked up towards the mountain and 
there, half-way to the top, stood a man, who from his 
high point of vantage could look out over the whole great 
valley, and see the pathway which would lead them in 
safety to their home. And he called to the men ; he 
pointed the way for them to go ; but instead of obeying 
him, they raised the question ; how did he get there ? And 
one said he came down from the top, and the other said 



THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 21 

he came up from below ; and they fell to quarreling, and 
instead of following the directions given, they quarreled 
on until they starved to death. Just so is it with Jesus. 
He stands way up there on the heights, far above all 
men, from which he can look out over all this great valley 
of life, and see every pathway that leads to happiness and 
home. And he is pointing the way, he is calling unto us 
to come unto him ; while we, lost in the depths of our 
selfishness and sin, instead of following the direction he 
points out, are quarreling as to how he got there, — did he 
come down ? or did he come up ? — when the one im- 
portant thing, so far as our every-day practical needs are 
concerned, is that he is there on the heights, and by virtue 
of his position speaks with authority, and points the way 
through life to our heavenly home. 

There are lots of things in this old world we cannot 
know, and it is best for us not to know. We cannot know 
all about God and all about his plans ; but I would rather 
think I do not know enough to comprehend God than to 
think God small enough for my poor, little, wretched 
comprehension. I cannot solve all the mysteries of life; 
but one thing I can know, the smallest child can know, 
and that is, God is my Heavenly Father, and will do for 
me, and with me, only what is best; and even if I do not 
understand I can trust Him ; I can know that He is 
wisdom, and that He is love, and that all things in His 
universe are moving on to the fulfilling of His infinite and 
loving purpose. 

The gospel of Christ comes into this age bringing 
what this age needs most of all, this message of God's 
wisdom and God's love. Though we knew nothing else 
of God's dealings with men, did we but know this, that 



22 THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 

God is wisdom, and God is love, it would involve more 
than men have ever dreamed of in all their philosophies 
and all their theologies. And when we come to the soul 
of Christianity we find that this is what it is, just as it is 
the soul of this great universe. 

God is love. Out in the world amidst the beauties of 
nature, where the mountains rear aloft their peaks, the 
plains stretch wide, and rivers run their course, the rest- 
less ocean sketches in each movement some new scene of 
grandeur and beauty, each day with its sunshine and 
cloud-pictures, each night wrapped in its mantle of dark- 
ness or brilliant with the myriad lights of heaven, each 
sunset glorious in its delicate coloring, each changing 
season with its bounty of gracious gifts, — each movement 
but traces the autograph of God signing all things good ; 
and these words written in this Holy Bible are but the 
confirmation of what is written everywhere. 

The gospel of Jesus Christ is but God's love made 
vocal, the life of Jesus Christ but human possibility made 
real. 

Jesus would purify the sources of our life. When we 
love God and man as he loved God and man, his perfect 
life will come as naturally from us as it came from him. 

That is a false conception of the gospel of Jesus Christ 
that looks alone to the heaven and the hell of the 
future ; it is a false conception of his spirit that makes 
religion but a disagreeable process for the sake of the 
reward hereafter, — to be forever drawing our sleds up 
the hill of time that we may slide down the slopes of 
eternity. 

The belief that God is love and the triumph of good 
over evil have been the inspiration of the great and good of 



THE GOSPEL FOR TO-DAY. 23 

every age, whatever may have been the formal creeds of 
men. It has been the trust in God's love, and the final 
victory over all evil, that has enabled men to endure the 
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, — yea, that has 
enabled them to sing praises to God while the martyr's 
flame wrapped them as with a garment. It was this 
assurance that God is wise and good, and that sometime 
the men who persecuted and killed him would come to 
know their wrong and turn to him, that enabled Jesus 
Christ to endure, to trust, and wait ; it was this hope that 
those men would not sometime be everlastingly pun- 
ished, but would sometime love him, that gave voice to 
the prayer for their forgiveness. It was this hope of the 
salvation of the human race ; that his sufferings were not 
in vain, that he should see the travail of his soul and be 
satisfied, that enabled him in the garden to pray that his 
Father's will, not his, be done. 

And this is the spirit of the gospel of to-day, as it was 
the spirit of the gospel when it first was sung. 

It was love that gave the world a Christ. It was love 
that touched the lips of the angels, and loosed that gospel- 
song above the hills of Bethlehem which the years have 
but augmented in its grandeur. Down through the dis- 
cords of the centuries we can trace its harmony, each 
day the chords of some new heart being tuned in unison, 
and the chorus swelling wider and higher with each pass- 
ing moment ; we catch the spirit of the universal promise 
when the whole family in heaven and earth shall join in 
singing, Good Tidings of great joy — not to the few, not 
to the many, but, just as they sung it of old : " Good 

TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY TO ALL PEOPLE." 



UNIVERSALIS! BELIEF IN GOD. 

SARATOGA, 1899. By W. S. CROWE, D-D. 

"OUR FATHER." 

The first thought in any religion must be the thought 
of God. Every theology, every philosophy, every intel- 
lectual system, must begin with a definition of God. Our 
conception of human life, of the meaning and the value 
of life, of the nature of man, whether it be spiritual, 
depends on our conception of God's nature. 

What or Who is the Cause of our Life ? 

Is the Cause of our life a purposeless or a purposing 
cause ? A mere force, like gravitation, or a loving 
Father ? As the cause, so the result. If God be an 
impersonal force, and not a spiritual being, then we are 
not spiritual beings nor personalities. Force does not 
become spirit, any more than matter becomes force. The 
apple did not evolve itself into gravitation, and gravitation 
did not evolve itself into a Newton to discover itself 
with. There is no such thing as spontaneous life, much 
less can there be such a thing as spontaneous immortal 
life. If we are spirits, we came from Spirit. God's 
nature determines ours. 

Conversely, our nature explains his. Let us base our 
theology on what we know. Theories are giant kites. 
A boy was dragged over the housetop by his big kite 



UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 2$ 

the other day, and dashed to death against the chimney. 
Let us keep our feet on the ground. We know that we 
have a moral nature, good and evil purposes ; that we 
generally try to do right, sometimes consenting to the 
wrong. We have a plenty of theories which fly wild of 
that simple fact ; but we know it is a plain, practical, 
every-day fact. What of it ? Why, of it an Admiral 
Dewey's fleet against agnosticism. Here is the logic of 
it, plain as a turnpike road. Because we have moral pur- 
pose we know that a certain wondrous freedom is ours. 
Fate has no sensibility to right and wrong ; purpose 
grows out of choice. And thus because we have liberty 
we know that we are somehow divinely unlike any mere 
force. Electricity does not choose. To choose puts us 
over in the realm of spirit, and necessitates a spiritual 
origin. If God have not the power of choice, then the 
stream has risen above the fountain. 

God 's Personality. 

Many are troubled by that good old phrase, the per- 
sonality of God. They are quite ready to call him "a 
Spiritual Being," or "the Great First Cause," or "the 
Life-Principle of the universe ; " but they shrink before 
the word personality. I have tried to get at the secret of 
this hesitancy to call God a person. I have asked scores 
of thoughtful men and women why they doubted the per- 
sonality of God. The replies were vague, but in the mist 
I could generally discern two words of spectral import. 
Those two words, towering ominously in some quarter of 
the reply, were "infinite" and "changeless." There 
seems a sort of chaotic fear that the infinite and the 
changeless cannot be personal. When people believed 



26 UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 

that God was in form as a man, and that he dwelt in a 
given place, nobody doubted his personality ; but if he is 
everywhere, omnipresent, as matter or ether or space, 
how can he be a person ? When they get away from 
location and shape they are in the fog. 

Suppose you apply the doubt to yourself. Where is 
your personality ? In your - head ? In your bosom ? 
Will you turn skeptic on that, because you cannot fix 
the boundary ? Let us keep our feet on the ground. 
We do know a great many things which we cannot' lo- 
cate. We know our own ideas of politics and business 
and religion. We know our friendships and loves and 
patriotism. But where is love, yours or mine ? Where 
is an idea ? What is the shape of it ? How large a space 
does it fill ? The best and most substantial and most 
familiar things in our own nature elude the prying ma- 
terialism of curiosity in a way which ought to make us 
careful how we doubt God. If we have no physical 
measurement for our personality, why should God's in- 
finitude be any argument against his ? When I had said 
this once before, a good woman came to me and said : " I 
think I can understand what you meant by the wideness 
of God's presence. I have one child in the home, one in 
a Western city, one in England, and one in the land to 
which Ave journey ; and often as I sit and think I seem 
to be equally present with all of them. They are not 
back with me in the home, but my yearning soul goes to 
them, broods over them, pours itself about them." And 
I said, " Thank you ; I understand it better myself now." 
It were a wholesome thing if preachers often listened to 
these echo-sermons from their people. When Christ 
had fed the multitude he gathered up more than he 
distributed. 



UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 2 J 

But God is changeless, the doubter urges, and a per- 
son is subject to change ! Not the best parts of a person. 
You loved your children when they were little ; and you 
love them still, in the same dear old way. You believed 
in the great principles of democracy with your first vote, 
though you voted for Jackson ; and in every spirit of those 
principles you are voting for Jackson yet. You tried to' 
do what was right as long ago as you can remember ; and 
your moral purpose, while the earth swung wide and the 
heavens revolved, has been as steady in its place as the 
north star. The only reason for changing our methods 
is that we need to learn and need to do better. If we 
were perfectly wise and good, our way of doing things, 
also, would be without variableness or the shadow of 
turning. I saw Booth play Hamlet a great many times, 
and in all the later years he played it in the changeless 
way. Every familiar phrase, every crucial saying, was 
given with tone and gesture and eye-flash invariable. 
Why ? Because he had perfected his dream, reached his 
ideal, knew how to play it exactly right ; and any change 
would have been a mistake. Did he lose his personality 
in that changeless method ? It was the absoluteness of 
personality. God's work is ideal. His dream is the scien- 
tific method. His way of doing things is so entirely 
right that astronomers may calculate an eclipse of Jupi- 
ter's least moon to the fraction of a second, a thousand 
years in advance. Should the changeless method beget 
any fear that he is impersonal ? If one of those moons 
should go astray, if Jupiter should wobble out of his orbit, 
if the sun should be an hour late getting up to-morrow 
morning, if the earth should take a wild caper through 
the zodiac and lose her proper seasons, I, for one, would 



28 UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 

begin to doubt that an All-Wise Person kept the manage- 
ment ; but while the universe runs smoothly, and every 
dancing planet keeps time to the music, I shall hold to 
my happy belief that Mind and Will and Purpose are on 
the throne. 

I am using the word " personality " because it is the 
popular term. I mean all that the sticklers for definition 
mean by the word "individuality." All devotees to the 
latest isms will please take note. I like definition as a 
staff or a bridge to help me along. I do not like it as 
a creed or a hobby with which to become peculiar. I 
recall that Herbert Spencer refused to speak of God as a 
person, not because the word tells too much, but because 
it tells too little ; and I regret that he gave us no other 
word for religious uses. To be sure, he gave us a word, 
"unknowable," and exhorted us that if we could only 
know what it meant we should be satisfied. Well, I am 
not satisfied with a criticism which pulls down my warm 
hut in the winter time, and points me to the luxuries of 
an unattainable mansion on the other side of the world. 

The religious use of Divine personality is the most 
practical thing in religion. We shall be a great deal 
happier ; our faith will be a hundred-fold more vital and 
precious ; morality and duty and sacrifice will have new 
meanings ; prayer and hope and trust will become genu- 
ine things ; our own souls will have a vastly increased 
reality about them ; our existence on earth will round into 
nobler form ; the life beyond death will lay hold on us 
with unwonted vigor, — when we escape the icy mists that 
swirl about the mountain tops of speculation, and come 
down to the warm and fruitful ground of the heart-life, 
and worship God as a person — our Father. All reli- 



UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 29 

gions that have power over the consciences of men, all 
churches that have grace to redeem the multitudes from 
crime and vice, all sermons that give comfort in sorrow, 
all beliefs that inspire a host with the martyr spirit for 
truth and right and humanity, are such as lead to a sacred 
communion with the personal God. Only when our pur- 
pose makes music with His purpose shall we come into 
our kingdom. 

The Supreme Purpose of God. 

What is God's purpose ? It must be something very 
wonderful regarding us, when we appreciate the time and 
the cost. A man would not have servants working ten 
years, at an expense of a million dollars, on a house that 
was to serve as a single night's lodging. God's laws and 
forces have been toiling through countless ages in the 
fashioning of this goodly earth. From eternity his 
thought and love have been working toward the human 
race, as it finally appeared. The cost of this human life 
has been infinite pain and sorrow. What is it all for ? 
A night's lodging ? Are we brought on the stage with 
so much labor, just to hurry across and drop into obliv- 
ion ? I do not pause with asking whether that would 
be quite fair to us. I ask, with all the earnestness of 
reverence, how it would repay God ? what pleasure it 
would be to him ? how he could feel satisfied with such 
meager result of his vast expenditure ? If this be not 
the beginning and the pledge of some adequate result, 
our thoughts have no recourse but cynicism. If God be 
our Father and our Mother, we know there shall come an 
adequate result. 

Where is the father, where *is the mother, who has not 



30 UN1VERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 

spent the sweetest hours in life dreaming of what might 
be done for the children ! If we had the means and the 
time, and if we could induce them to profit by all our 
good offices, oh, how great and wise and pure and happy 
they should be ! They should have the best education 
the earth affords ; they should be accomplished and trav- 
eled and trained to noble work ; they should have the 
most beautiful manners, until everybody admired them 
and we were almost too proud to live, — ourselves a 
thousand times happier in them than in any possible thing 
for ourselves ! How it crushes our hearts when we can- 
not do for them what we would ! I have never seen 
tears more bitter than scalded the cheeks of a fond 
mother because she could not dress her little girls as she 
would like to. I have seen strong fathers bowed in un- 
utterable grief because they could not educate their sons 
as they had hoped. 

Dear friends, I am talking theology. 

These father and mother hearts of ours are the revela- 
tion of God. He means that every child of his shall have 
more and richer and sweeter than we can dream for our 
sons and daughters. That explains why God caused the 
earth and produced the human race. His happiness is 
to make his children wise and good and happy. 

God^s Purpose must become Man's Purpose. 

But there is more to it ; for all that we bestow we want 
a heart return. We want our children to love us, ten- 
derly and constantly, because we give ourselves to them. 
That is all the pay we ask. That is our exceeding great 
reward. I am still talking theology. It is the very best 
part of my religion to feel that God wants me to appre- 



UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 3 1 

ciate his kindness and love him for it, as I want my 
son to appreciate my kindness and love me. When that 
feeling warms the soul of a man, how can he help offer- 
ing a prayer of gratitude ? How can he help trying to 
live right and do his duty ? No finer sentiment ever 
wells up from the soul of a child, no greater moral force 
ever stirs within him, than when he says, "Father, mother, 
I will be true, and I will do my utmost, because you desire 
it and your kindness deserves it." When a man feels 
thus toward God, the genius and the power and the fervor 
and the beauty of religion dwell within him. 

Let me insist that our final thought is not of the out- 
ward things we can do for our children, but of the things 
we can accomplish within them. We want them to be 
in pleasant places, delightfully surrounded ; but what they 
are is of infinitely greater importance than what they 
have or where they are. We'd rather have them clean 
toilers for their daily bread than millionaires corroded 
with vice ; and this is more theology, fresh from the 
fountains of everlasting truth. I doubt not that God has 
a beautiful heaven — millions of them — in reserve for 
his children ; but the main problem is that each man 
shall be able to appreciate and enjoy and make splendid 
use of his heaven when he gets, there. If he have not the 
mind to appreciate, nor the moral sense to enjoy, nor the 
lofty impulse to use the advantages of any beautiful place, 
it were in vain to go. A benevolent gentleman brought 
an Apache brave from the cactus plains, and stored him 
in a Boston hotel. He would impress that savage with 
the glories of civilization. The savage was not impres- 
sionable. He didn't like the food, and he couldn't endure 
the bed ; and the second afternoon he ran away, and late 



32 UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 

at night a policeman found him sleeping on the Common. 
He said he was lonesome, and wanted to go back. Tak- 
ing people to the most delightful place in creation were 
no benevolence, if they have no intellectual and moral 
preparation for it. The kingdom of heaven — the only 
kingdom of heaven worth while — is within you. Chris- 
tianity started with that doctrine, and true Christianity 
must return to it. 

The Illimitableness of the Universe. 

I suppose the traditional thought of just two worlds 
beyond this is the greatest obstacle that Christian thought 
ever encountered. It has sadly materialized the religion 
of Christ, and made salvation a question of geography. 
The only purpose God can have in places, here or here- 
after, is to use them as helps in the upbuilding of souls. 
To complete the soul, by any and all means, by joy and 
sorrow, by delights and agonies, by rewards and punish- 
ments ; to educate and refine ; to lift the Apache into a 
Shakespeare, and the hoodlum into a St. John ; to carry 
on some great course of study and discipline, after the 
manner of this earthly experience, until every mind 
shines as the firmament, and every life blooms with virtue 
as June with roses ; at last to behold all souls in his own 
likeness and image — nothing short of that can be God's 
purpose ; and we know it, for we have children. 

Human Resistance to God must be Overcome. 

One thing more, and the bitterest thing that ever 
comes : our children sometimes refuse our good offices. 
They have wills and wonts of their own, especially wonts. 
We guide and chide, but the initial work is to rouse within 



UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 33 

them a good desire. They must wish to do right. In a 
lifetime we may not waken that celestial wish from slum- 
ber. What then ? Have we done our day's work ? And 
shall we cease with the sunset ? When President Lin- 
coln had long been annoyed with that kind of service, he 
said he would like a man to fight Robert E. Lee who 
would not take the contract by the day, who would take 
it by the job. If we have not saved our children in this 
world, we must keep right on trying to save them in the 
next, until we finish the job. 

This is more theology, and of the best possible sort. 

Millions come to their death without wishing to do right. 
Millions come to their death in such well-nigh total ignor- 
ance, that right and wrong make slight appeal to them. 
What then ? What are the saved people doing over 
yonder ? Just what they would be doing here, I'll war- 
rant you. I do not think St. Paul left his missionary 
zeal in the grave. I cannot imagine that Jesus lost all 
concern for sinners on Calvary. It is impossible that 
Wilberforce and Howard and Elizabeth Fry and Wesley 
and Gough and Mrs. Booth gave up trying to res- 
cue the fallen when they crossed the bar. There are no 
walls about the throne high enough to prevent good 
mothers getting away and searching through ten thousand 
hells, if there be so many, until they find their lost ones, 
and love them back into the fold. 

The Father s Punishments. 

Love alone may not be sufficient. It is not sufficient. 
God has provided punishment also. Every painful conse- 
quence is a punishment. Twenty-five years ago I sat at 
the feet of my dear old friend, Doctor Thomas, and heard 



34 UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 

him say that he supposed there were innumerable hells 
beyond the grave, just as there are innumerable effects 
of evil this side the grave, but that they all have the 
nature of reform schools. Let us come back to the gran- 
ite foundation of theology : if you ever do punish your 
children, why ? because your enjoy it ? because they have 
broken your law and you are angry ? You do not tell 
the neighbors so. There is but one answer — for the 
child's good. Isn't it the strangest, wildest dream ever 
dreamed in the house of prayer, by fathers and mothers, 
that God could punish his children for any other reason 
than to make them good ? 

How long, O Lord, how long must suffering endure ? 
Till it work reformation. There '11 be a plenty of punish- 
ment — don't worry about that. Liberalism is not an 
easy gospel. These 's no avoiding consequences. There's 
no shifting the responsibility. Nobody can bear the load 
for us, get well for us, do right for us. There's no 
getting out of it through the pleasant by-path of annihi- 
lation — not if a soul amounts to as much as a dust mote. 
Our hope is that the worst will see the folly of reaping 
the whirlwind, and will have the good sense, in a reason- 
able time, to leave off sowing the wind. Till that day 
arrive cause and effect will hold their course in pain ; 
but there is still an eternity beyond for improvement 
and happiness. 

This Theology Natural and Reasonable. 

My conviction is that these perfectly simple and 
natural teachings, which are the spontaneous thoughts of 
all fathers and mothers, would be the accepted beliefs in 
all churches, if the school-book theologians would only 



UNIVERSALIST BELIEF IN GOD. 35 

let us alone. We believe all manner of absurdities be- 
cause we are dragged out of ourselves and drilled from 
infancy in self-distrust. It is the ancient tryanny, 
when people must get their salvation of the priests. 
Native ideas, common sense, moral law, the facts of ex- 
perience, spontaneous impulses, things known and demon- 
strated every day, were all too obvious. There could be 
no monopoly of such wares. The fictitious, the mysteri- 
ous, the contradictory, and the impossible gave priests 
their monopoly. If the understudies to the priests would 
but let us all alone, just a blessed little while, to read the 
Bible for ourselves, and behold the Christ with our own 
eyes, and pray the prayers which gather and burn in our 
own hearts, and listen to the voices of God that sweetly 
sing in our own loves and consciences, there would soon 
be one, great, good religion brooding the whole earth. 
God, our Father ; virtue, our salvation ; to do good, our 
eternal and joyous task ; final holiness and happiness for 
everybody, — that would be the substance of it. 



THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

HIRAM W. THOMAS, D.D. 

" Having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to 
come." — i Timothy iv. 8. 

There may be, there doubtless is, much, very much, 
of that which is, of which man has no knowledge. He 
"knows in part ;" knows only a part of the part. But 
he knows something ; that something is but a part, but 
it is a part of the all ; hence to be able to know even 
a little, is to stand upon the high plane of self-conscious 
being ; it is to be man. 

Of his present existence, of "the life that now is," it 
is not possible to doubt, nor even to question. There is 
no way for one to prove one's own being ; nor is there 
any way to deny it. The consciousness of each one that 
says " I am " is final. 

The affirmation of being, of self, carries with it the 
related affirmation of the other. Self and other go to- 
gether ; the consciousness that says, " I am " says, has to 
say, the world is. Without the world, man as he now 
is, as a physical being, could not be ; and without the 
" other," without a something to come up against, a 
something that is discriminated as the "not self," the 
"self," if it were possible to be, could not know that it 
is. And I think that the same deep philosophy applies 
to the Infinite ; that God knows himself by the othering, 

36 



THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 37 

the self-sundering, or other becoming of himself in a uni- 
verse. With the Infinite, to think is to be ; thinking a 
world, a world is. God always thinking ; the universe 
always was ; for the universe is the objectivized thought 
of the Infinite. 

The doctrine of " Eternal Generation," made light of by 
Colonel Ingersoll and others, is a profound metaphysical 
fact. Of course, if the term "generation" is to find its 
only illustration in the relation of father to child in our 
time and sense world, then it is plain that the father must 
exist before the child ; but even in this we have to think 
that the stream of life that is continuously clothing itself 
in new bodily forms did not begin in any immediate 
parentage ; back of that was another and another ; and 
we have to think that life always was, for had there been 
a time when it was not, it never could have been. 

God is the living God, and the God of the living. Life 
is God ; God is life, life holds all that is ; all reason, 
thought, beauty, justice, love, as well as the life of 
material forms ; holds qualities as well as quantities. 

For more than two hundred years the early church de- 
bated over the generation and nature of the Christ, and 
it all raged about one word, and over one letter in one 
word ; it was the Greek word, Jiomoousian, — homo, 
"same," and ousian, "nature." The Orthodox claimed 
that Christ was homoousian, — was of the same nature as 
God ; the Arians claimed that he was homoioasian ; oid is 
"like" in Greek; that he was like God in nature, but 
not of the same nature. 

Some people laugh at theology ; at a debate of two 
hundred years over one letter in a word ; the letter is 
iota in Greek ; but to those who go deeply into the sub- 



38 THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 

ject, it makes a great difference whether we say that the 
Christ is in kind the same as God, or only like him in 
some way of resemblance. Religion must have its thought 
side. In this case I am with the Orthodox faith ; am 
a Homoousian ; believe that in kind Christ is like God, 
has the same nature ; and I believe that in kind man 
is like God, hence that in essence humanity is divine. 

All this may seem a little difficult to grasp in thought, 
and may seem far off from the continuity of life ; but it 
will come in place farther along in our study. 

Man knows " the life that now is ; " knows self, and 
other ; but he has to face the fact of a near and tremen- 
dous change, — the fact of the death of the body. And 
viewed from the physical side, or to the sense under- 
standing, death is the end of his existence ; the body 
returns to the dust ; to sight, hearing, touch, — to sense 
perception, — the life is gone ; the form has disappeared ; 
we call, and there is no voice answering back ; we go to the 
graves of loved ones, and all is silence, deep, unspeaking 
silence. 

Hence one of the great, greatest questions in a world 
where the many have lived and died, is : Is there a "life 
to come " ? Race continuity is not doubted ; in spite of 
death, the race has lived on, and will continue to live on 
in the ages to come. But is there a continuity of life in 
the sense that those who have ceased to live in the " life 
that now is," are living in what to them was then "the 
life to come " ? When, in a few years, we who are living 
now must go to our graves will there be for us a "life 
to come," — the continuity of being, of self-conscious life, 
in some other world ? 

Death being the dissolution of the body, of the sense- 



THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 39 

organism, it should not seem strange that the senses are 
so almost helpless to give answer, and that to sense- 
perception death is the end. 

We must turn, then, to other sources, to the soul-side 
of being, for such light as may be possible. And here 
we at once come upon the fact, that in the present state 
of being it is the mind, and not the body, that knows. 
It is true, that the senses are the media of knowledge ; 
that much, most, all if you will, that the mind knows, 
has come to it through the senses ; but still, there is a 
something back of the senses that takes up their reports, 
interprets their meanings ; a something that knows ; a 
something that owns, uses, and explains the senses, but of 
which the senses can give no account. The senses feel; 
this other something knows. 

We call it mind, soul, spirit ; but what are these ? 
Merely terms taken largely from the physical in its finer 
forms, as breathing, to give a sense interpretation of that 
best known, and yet least known something that we call 
ourselves, our self-conscious being. By mind we mean 
that something that perceives, names, knows, remembers, 
wills ; but what it is, no one pretends to know, any more 
than anyone pretends to know what anything in ultimate 
essence is. 

A strange, and yet not strange fact, is, that while to 
the senses the death of the body is the end of existence, 
there rises up from the soul-side of being, the thought, 
the faith, and hope of the continuity of life. It is a faith 
that has risen up in spite of the evidences of the senses, 
and has continued through the ages ; and it has been so 
common to all tribes and nations that it may be called 
universal. 



40 THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 

Of course, it has existed in many forms, — some, vague, 
confused, grotesque even ; others more clear ; but it is 
the fact of such faith in any form that should be accen- 
tuated. Whence this contradiction of the evidence of 
the senses ? What does it mean ? It has risen up out 
of that something that we call mind, — the soul-side of 
being ; it is a love of life, a desire to be, and a feeling 
that life is somehow greater than death, and that man 
does not die. Its root is in the feeling, the belief, that 
man is more than a physical organism, — more than flesh 
and blood ; that he is, or has, a spirit. 

The old doctrine of Animism, anima, soul ; anima 
mundi, the soul of the world — has in some form come 
down through all the past. Plants and trees had souls ; 
birds and animals ; every living thing ; and elements, the 
winds and waters, and the planets. And all this from 
the feeling in man that he was not alone a body, but a 
soul. 

Naturally, from this feeling, faith, comes the belief in 
ghosts ; the souls of the dead walking, appearing in attenu- 
ated, ghostly, air-like forms. From this naturally comes 
the apotheosis or deification and worship of the dead. 
Herbert Spencer claims that from the belief in ghosts 
arose not alone ancestor worship, but the belief in God, 
and that all religions had their genesis from this common 
source. 

The four hundred millions of China, the two hundred 
and fifty millions of India, — half the population of the 
earth, — all believe in souls that exist after the death of 
the bodies in which they lived ; we are told it prevails 
in some form among all the tribes of Africa. We know 
it was the common belief of all the ancient peoples, around 



THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 4 1 

the Mediterrannean ; the Egyptians, Persians, Babylo- 
nians ; it runs through the literature of Greece and Rome ; 
the Iliad is full of it ; so is the ^Eneid of Virgil ; and, in- 
deed, this Animism is present in modern poetry; it makes 
possible the " Ancient Mariner " of Coleridge, and 
breathes in subtle form in Wordsworth's " Intimations 
of Immortality ; " it is present in Hamlet and other 
plays of Shakespeare ; and in Dante it is the one thing 
always present. 

While the Jews were less mystical, and the doctrine of 
immortality is less plainly taught in the Old Testament, 
still, the belief in the life of souls after death appears, as 
in the recalling of the spirit of Samuel by the Witch of 
Endor ; and in the life of the Christ it is common in the 
belief in both good and bad spirits ; and it runs along 
through the teaching of the apostles. 

Both ancient and modern witchcraft rest upon the 
belief in the continued life of souls after the death of the 
bodies in which they had lived. In Europe alone a 
hundred thousand were put to death in quite recent times 
because they were believed to be obsessed, or possessed 
by evil spirits. 

And then there is the fact of modern spiritualism. 
Say, if you will, that much of it is fraud, deception ; still, 
its existence is a fact ; and thousands who never saw a 
professed medium live in the comforting faith that in 
some form their loved ones gone are often with them ; 
and may it not be so ? why should the ships all sail one 
way, and none come back to the shores of time ? 

Mr. Stead of London sent me a little book the other 
day in which he claims to have been the automatic aman- 
uensis of the spirit of one in spirit life wishing to commu- 



f7 



42 THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

nicate with a dear friend on earth ; and he says many of 
the facts, names, places in these communications were 
matters of which he had no personal knowledge. The 
letters are certainly very beautiful. 

And then there is the fact of theosophy, and of Christian 
Science ; and while these do not emphasize the doctrine 
of Spiritualism, they do accentuate the fact that man not 
only has a soul, but the better and stronger statement of 
the case, that he is a soul, that in essence he is a divine 
life. 

Two hundred years before Mrs. Eddy was born, a 
learned German, Dr. Thahl, set forth the foundation prin- 
ciples, and in clearer terms than its modern teacher has 
been able to do, that man at center, in essence, is a 
divine life ; that the normal expression of this life is 
health ; that this spirit or life formed the body ; that the 
body did not create the mind, but the mind the body, and 
that the thought, the life of the soul, should control the 
body. 

Yon will observe that I am not arguing, but suggest- 
ing ; trying to bring out the facts or workings of the 
mind of man along the line of beliefs in the existence of 
the soul, of a spiritual being in man, that does not cease to 
be at the death of the body, but lives on in some unseen 
world. 

And the wonder is that this faith has so filled all the 
thinking of the past ; that in so many forms it has come 
on down and filled the present. It is the mind- world for- 
ever rising up in the very face of death ; the life-world 
affirming its persistence, its continuity, in spite of death. 

If we stand on the sense-side of existence, and look 
only from that side, the death-world obscures the higher 



THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 43 

vision, life dies with the body. But if we stand on the 
spirit, the life-side of life, then mind, the soul-world, rises 
up and fills all ; the soul lives on, the real being lives on, 
and death is but an incident in the evolution of life. 

It may be said that this universal belief in the conti- 
nuity of life was often so strange, so grotesque, as to take 
away its meaning, its value. But the same may be said 
of other beliefs of the past, — of the theories of the creation, 
of astronomy, of chemistry ; they were very far from the 
real facts as these are now known. But the real facts were 
there all the time, awaiting the clearer interpretation. The 
mistakes of the human mind have been mistakes about 
the real ; nor could they take away that real ; and the 
journey of the mind has been to the real, and it now 
rejoices in the real astronomy and the real chemistry. 

And so may we follow the evolution of the animism, 
of the anima mundi, that filled earth and sky with 
tree-spirits, with cloud and star spirits ; filled the universe 
with many gods, on to the reign of natural laws in the 
material world, and the great thought of the one living 
God, — the universal reason, right, love. 

We no longer now think of God as outside of nature, 
outside of the universe, making it, putting it together as a 
mechanism, and regulating its working. We think of God 
as in nature, of nature as the expression of God ; and we 
interpret the order of nature by the reason that is a part 
of our being; and in this we are coming to see and feel 
that man, in kind, in reason, is like God, though less in 
degree. It is a higher interpretation and understanding 
of the real. 

And we are coming to see that there is a moral order, 
a universe order of the good, and that justice and love 



44 THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 

are ever, in all worlds, the same in kind, in man and God. 
And in this way, not only is the natural order understood 
as the result of natural law, but the spiritual comes under 
moral law, and God is immanent in all, and man is coming 
to see himself more clearly than ever before as the child 
of God ; thinking in the thoughts of God, and living the 
life of God, in the emotions and principles of the beautiful 
and the good. 

And the science that has helped us, that has put law in 
the place of the old animism, put gravity, centripetal and 
centrifugal attraction, in place of the supposed spirits that 
were thought to pull and push the planets in their orbits ; 
the science that has displaced the fairy world, and put in 
its place the real world, — comes now with its argument 
for the continuity of life, the immortality of the soul. 

Not all exact science, we may say ; for science and phi- 
losophy come together in the higher realm. What cannot 
be weighed and measured must be passed on to the quali- 
tative in the world of mind, and is speculative. 

But science says this : The end of the creation is life, 
and it traces the processes of world-shaping all the way 
from chaos to the conditions when life is possible. And 
then it traces life all the way from protoplasm to man, 
and says the movement was to man, and that all the pos- 
sibilities and gains through the long way of the lower have 
been carried up to the higher ; that man is the crowning 
glory of the creation. And here science joins with reason 
and religion, and says the creation must have some higher 
meaning and end than death; that if man dies with the 
body, the whole long-toiling, purposeless order of the ages 
in carrying life up to the high, rational, and moral con- 
sciousness of a world has no meaning. Science joins with 



THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 45 

philosophy in affirming that the wonderful fact of life, of 
reason, of justice, of love must mean more than death; 
that the great life of man cannot end in the dust, the 
ashes of the tomb. 

And here come, with their great meanings, the words 
of the Christ : God is not the God of the dead, but of the 
living ; for all live unto him. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
had long been dead ; but God is the God of these patri- 
archs ; therefore they are still living. We must come to 
see that there are other forms of life than the physical ; 
that is but the lower form in which the higher soul-life is 
clothed for a few years. God is life ; life in its essence ; 
the soul of man is life ; man is the child of God, shares 
this life with God, and hence does not die with the body. 
If we could think of a God of death ; a dead God ; then 
could we think, not only that man dies, but that over all 
the beauty of a world, a universe, would rest at last the 
black pall, and only the ashes of life remain ; that reason 
and love would die ; but for life, these could not have 
been ; they are life, life eternal. 

What "the life to come " may be, must be the study 
of another hour. It is the life of the present that we are 
now living ; and it is worth living only as it is seen in the 
light of the "life that is to come." That is not to say 
that life here is not a blessing ; that all its pleasures are 
naught ; that its truth, its beauty, its love ineffable, has 
no value. Not this ; but that they are so great, so dear, 
that it is only in the thought of their continuance that 
the soul can rest. Reason asks for the endless years ; 
the heart longs for the forever of love. We can bear the 
sorrows, the separations, of time, in the hope of the glad 
greetings of eternity ; we can weep the dark hours away, 



46 THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE. 

knowing that joy will come with the morning ; we can 
wait till the night is gone, and the angel faces smile. 

" Twilight and evening bell ; 
And after that the dark. 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
When I embark. 

For though beyond our bourn of time and place 

The billows bear me far ; 
I hope to meet my Pilot face to face, 

When I have crossed the bar." 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

EDWIN C. SWEETSER, D.D. 

" These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they re- 
ceived the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures 
daily whether those things were so." — Acts xvii. n. 

I take these words from the book of Acts rather as a 
motto than as a text for my sermon ; for my text is the 
entire Bible, and I mention this particular portion of it 
simply to show the frame of mind in which we ought to 
consider it. 

My subject is Universalism and the Bible ; and, by 
way of preface to what I shall say as to the relation be- 
tween them, let me call your attention to the privilege 
which we have of searching the Scriptures as thoroughly 
as we choose. That privilege, for the great mass of the 
people of Christendom, dates only from the time of the 
Protestant Reformation ; for although, in the early part of 
the Christian era, it was allowable for any person to study 
the Scriptures if he was able tc get possession of them, 
yet in those days they existed only in manuscript form, 
and were too costly to be distributed very extensively, as 
printing had not been invented. Then came the dark 
ages, and the Bible was but little known until the time 
of Martin Luther. For a thousand years its light was 
hidden under the double bushel of an obsolete language 
and the pretensions of an arrogant priesthood, who would 

47 



48 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

not let the people have it, and many of whom themselves 
were not able to read. The common people knew that 
there was such a book; but of its contents they were 
ignorant, excepting what the priesthood told them. They 
supposed that it contained the doctrines of the Roman 
Catholic church, and that their only chance of escaping 
from everlasting damnation was to accept whatsoever 
they were told by the priesthood, without attempting to 
find out the truth for themselves. 

But when Luther broke the chains of Rome he took 
away the obstruction which had hindered the people from 
reading the Bible ; and never before was it so accessible 
as it is at this day. Never before were there so many 
facilities for studying it, and finding out its actual mean- 
ing. Blessed are our eyes and our ears, that we can 
see and hear, in this respect, what many people in former 
ages often wished for in vain. 

There is still a difference, however, as in the time of 
St. Paul, between the willingness of some people to learn 
from the Scriptures, and the unwillingness of others who 
have the same opportunity. There is the same difference 
between different classes of Christians as between the 
Jews of Berea and those of Thessalonica. Some are 
willing to investigate the Scriptures with thoroughness, 
and to accept conclusions which conflict with their 
previous opinions, whereas others will not listen to any- 
thing concerning it which does not agree with their in- 
herited views. For the latter class of people there is no 
better advice than that which was given by the Rev. John 
Robinson to the little company of pilgrims who set sail 
in the Mayflower, as they were about to leave the shores 
of Holland. " I charge you," said he, " before God and 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 49 

His blessed angels, that you follow me no further than 
you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The 
Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His Holy 
Word. I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the 
reformed churches, who are come to a period in religion, 
and will go at present no further than the instruments of 
their reformation. Luther and Calvin were great and 
shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into 
the whole counsel of God. I beseech you, remember it, 

— 'tis an article of your church covenant, — that you be 
ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to 
you from the written word of God." Noble advice in- 
deed was this from the lips of the grand old Puritan hero, 
and it is a great pity that the churches have not more 
commonly followed it. 

The Universalist church has followed it. From the 
beginning of its history it has been ready to receive new 
light as to the meaning of the Bible, and to accept fresh 
revelations of truth from its pages. In fact, it originated 
in such readiness on the part of its founders. They were 
brought up to believe that the Bible taught the doctrine 
of everlasting damnation for a portion of the human race 

— everlasting sin, everlasting misery, with no place for 
repentance, amidst the torments of hell. Most of them 
were brought up in the Calvinist churches, and had no 
doubt, in early life, that Calvinism was strictly Biblical in 
all of its teachings. But in later life, as they studied the 
Bible for themselves, they saw, even more clearly than 
Pastor Robinson had seen, that Calvin had not penetrated 
into the whole counsel of God ; for the more carefully 
they studied it, the more clearly they saw that, instead of 
teaching the doctrine of everlasting damnation for any 



SO UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

part of the human race, it teaches the glorious doctrine 
of universal salvation. They therefore became Univer- 
salists, and established Universalist churches, which soon 
became sufficiently numerous to constitute a new sect or 
denomination of Christians ; and so arose the Universal- 
ist church of today. 

The first article of the first creed of the Universalist 
church affirms its belief that " the Holy Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testaments contain a revelation of the 
character of God, and of the duty, interest, and final des- 
tination of mankind;" and in its latest declaration of 
principles there is an assertion of " the trustworthiness of 
the Bible as containing a revelation from God." On 
such a foundation of belief in the Bible the Universalist 
church was built, and thereon it still stands and presents 
its claims to the world. Like the apostle Paul, it in- 
vites mankind to search the Scriptures, and is ready to 
reason with them from the Scriptures in support of its 
views. 

For what does the Bible teach as to mankind and their 
destiny ? 

It teaches, first of all, that mankind are the offspring 
and children of God. It says that He has made them 
in His own image [Gen. 1:27; 9:6; I. Cor. 11:6; Jas. 
3:9]; that they are not merely physical, but spiritual 
beings [Job 32 : 8 ; Prov. 20: 27 ; Zech. 12 : 1 ; I. Cor. 
2:11; Heb. 12:23; I. Pet. 3 : 19] ; that He is the Fa- 
ther of their spirits [Heb. 12:9; Acts 17 : 28 ; Rom. 8 : 
16] ; and that after the death of their bodies, they all 
enter into that spirit world to which Jesus went after he 
arose from the dead [Eccl. 12:7; Luke 20 : 37, 38 ; Acts 
24: 15 ; I. Cor. 15 : 22]. 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 5 I 

It teaches, furthermore, that, notwithstanding their re- 
lationship to God, they are sinful. " Hear, O heavens, 
and give ear, O earth ; for the Lord hath spoken, I have 
nourished and brought up children, and they have re- 
belled against me," says the prophet Isaiah [Isa. 1 : 2], 
and St. Paul declares of both Jews and Gentiles that 
" they are all under sin," and that " there is none right- 
eous, no, not one" [Rom. 3 : 10]. "If we say that we 
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in 
us," says St. John [I. John 1:8]. Such is the uniform 
testimony of the Bible, and by no other preachers is that 
Scriptural truth more plainly stated than by those who 
belong to the Universalist church. Universalism pre- 
supposes the sinfulness of mankind ; since it teaches, as 
the Bible does, that sin is the principal thing from which 
they need to be saved [Lev. 16: 30; Ps. 79 : 9 ; Matt. 
1:21; Luke 1 : yy\ There would be no occasion for 
universal salvation if the human race were not sinful. 
Universalism denies the doctrine of inherited sin and 
that of total depravity, not finding them in the Bible 
or supported by reason ; but it distinctly affirms that 
mankind are not righteous, but disobedient and sinful, 
and that because of that fact they are in need of salva- 
tion, that they may become perfect as their heavenly 
Father is perfect [Matt. 5 : 48]. 

It also teaches, as the Bible does, that because of their 
sinfulness men deserve to be punished, and that no one 
can escape the punishment which is justly his due. No 
other church insists so strongly on the inevitableness of 
the penalty which men deserve for their sins. Instead 
of teaching, like other churches, that men can get away 
from the penalty of their sins by repenting and by trust- 



52 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

ing in the merits of Christ, it says, with the Bible, that 
although the Lord God is " merciful ard gracious, long- 
suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping 
mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression 
and sin, He will by no means clear the guilty " [Ex. 
34: 7], but that "though hand join in hand, the wicked 
shall not be unpunished" [Prov. 11 : 21]. The salvation 
which it proclaims is not salvation from punishment, but 
salvation from sin. For those people who sin, it pro- 
claims, with St. Paul, " tribulation and anguish upon 
every soul of man that doeth evil," without any respect 
of persons, or terms of evasion [Rom. 2: 8— n]. Uni- 
versalism does not mean that men can sin with impunity. 
It means that God will punish them as much as they 
deserve, that His law may be sustained and His purpose 
concerning them be fully accomplished. If they deserved 
endless punishment, there would be no escape from it, 
according to the teachings of the Universalist church. 

But when we search the Scriptures in regard to this 
matter, we do not find any law which requires such pun- 
ishment, or any statement that such will be the penalty 
of sin. On the contrary, we find abundant evidence that 
mankind, however sinful, deserve only such punishment 
as will result in their welfare, and that sometime all pun- 
ishment will come to an end. 

In the first place, when we turn to the book of Genesis, 
which contains an account of man's creation and of his 
beginning to sin, we find nothing which even intimates 
that the penalty would be endless. It is natural to sup- 
pose that before man had a chance to sin God would 
have warned him of such a penalty, if he were actually 
in danger of it. But, so far as the Bible shows, not 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. S3 

a hint of it was given to him. His only warning was 
this : " In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt 
surely die" [Gen. 2 : 17]. And after he had sinned, his 
only sentence was this : " In the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground ; for out 
of it wast thou taken ; for dust thou art, and unto dust 
shalt thou return " [Gen. 3:19]. He was expelled from 
the Garden of Eden, and obliged to work for his living, 
toiling in sorrow among thistles and thorns during the 
remainder of his life in this world. But not a single 
word was said, either before his offense or afterwards, to 
indicate that he was to be punished everlastingly on 
account of it. Neither Adam nor Eve received any inti- 
mation that such a fate was in store for them, or that 
they had involved their posterity in any such danger. 

Again, when Cain slew his brother Abel, there was a 
very fitting occasion to proclaim endless punishment if 
God really intended it ; but nothing of the kind was said. 
The murderer was condemned to wander as a fugitive 
and a vagabond, bearing a mark lest some one should 
kill him ; and that was all, excepting that the earth would 
not yield him its fruits [Gen. 4 : 12-15]. 

So, when the race became so wicked that, according to 
the figurative language of the Scriptures, "it repented 
God that He had made man," He did not intimate 
even then any intention to inflict endless punishment 
upon them. Nothing worse than temporal destruction 
was mentioned. And after the flood, He said nothing of 
such a penalty to Noah and his family, but left them to 
propagate a new race on the earth, subject to the old 
temptations, without a suggestion of any such danger. 

And so it went on for thousands of years, while 



54 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

millions of people were coming into the world, and 
sinning, and dying, all unconscious of such a penalty, 
so far as we are able to learn from the Bible. Abraham 
said nothing about it, for nothing was said to him about 
it. Moses never mentioned it, though it was his to de- 
clare the law which was given on Sinai, and the punish- 
ments which were to be visited upon .those who should 
break it. Isaiah, in his fiercest wrath against the ene- 
mies of God, never denounced any heavier evils upon 
them than the loss of their cities, the destruction of their 
homes, and death by famine, sword, and fire. So with 
the prophets in general. In the book of Daniel there is 
a passage which is often quoted mistakenly as a proof 
text of the doctrine of endless misery ; but from the first 
chapter of Genesis till we come to that passage, there is 
not a sentence in the Bible which even seems upon the 
surface to assert such a doctrine. Indeed, many of the 
ablest scholars who believe in that doctrine, freely admit 
that the Old Testament does not distinctly declare it, but 
that the penalties which it pronounces are chiefly, if not 
entirely, of a temporal kind. 

See what that admission means. It means that for 
thousands of years after the creation of mankind, God 
told them nothing about everlasting damnation, though 
there was none righteous, no, not one. Is it possible, 
that if they really deserved endless punishment, and 
were in danger of receiving it, God would not have men- 
tioned it during all of those centuries ? What would we 
think of a human king who should make a law for his 
subjects, that for certain offenses they should be put to 
the most horrible torture conceivable, and then should 
keep that law a secret, not giving them any knowl- 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 55 

edge of it until after many thousands of them had done 
the things forbidden by it ? Or what would we think of 
a human father who should send his children out into a 
dangerous country, full of wild beasts, snares, and pitfalls, 
without telling them the full extent of the peril awaiting 
them, and providing them with every possible safeguard 
against it ? How, then, can any one think it possible 
that God Himself would make a law subjecting sinners 
to the liability of everlasting damnation, and then send 
His children by the millions into such a world as this, 
abounding in temptations on every side, without telling 
them of that law, and doing all in His power to prevent 
them from breaking it ? Is not the silence of the Old 
Testament in regard to anything more than merely tem- 
poral punishments a very suggestive one ? Does it not 
furnish presumptive evidence against the belief in ever- 
lasting damnation ? 

It is in the New Testament, I know, that they who 
hold to that belief profess to find its strongest evidence ; 
but the passages upon which they rely in support of it 
are only a few and far between, and can easily be shown 
not to have such a meaning in the original language. 
Moreover, it is noteworthy that not one of those passages 
is found in the book of Acts, which contains a record 
of the missionary labors of the apostles for a number of 
years after they received their great commission from 
Christ. In all of their recorded sermons and speeches 
and addresses, there is not so much as a single sentence 
which, even in our English version, can be quoted as im- 
plying an interminable penalty. Why, if they believed in 
such a penalty, did they keep silence concerning it ? Is 
there not a strong presumption that they had received no 



$6 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

commission to preach such a doctrine, and did not believe 
in it ? The Universalist has no difficulty in explaining 
their silence. It accords with his belief in the salvation 
of all men. 

Universalism does not depend, however, on such nega- 
tive evidence for its Scriptural proof. It finds an abun- 
dance of positive evidence running through the Bible from 
beginning to end. 

Beginning with the book of Genesis, it finds a promise, 
at the very outset of man's sinful career, that the seed 'of 
woman shall bruise the serpent's head, whereas the ser- 
pent is simply to bruise man's heel [Gen. 3 : 15]. To 
bruise the head is to kill ; to bruise the heel is only to 
cause an injury which can be cured in time. Here, 
then, we have a heavenly promise, dating away back to 
the origin of sin, that mankind shall sometime conquer 
evil, and triumph over its dead remains. Evil is to be 
destroyed, and man is to survive the injury which he 
temporarily suffers from it. Nothing less than the final 
salvation of all men can ever be a fulfillment of that 
original gospel ; for if even a single human soul should 
continue to be sinful and miserable forever, or should lose 
its immortality, evil would not be destroyed, the serpent's 
head would not be bruised, and mankind would be sub- 
jected to an irremediable injury. 

Again, we are told in the book of Genesis that God 
said to Abraham, that in him and his seed (which the 
New Testament interprets as referring to Christ) should 
all families of the earth be blessed [Gen. 12: 3]. How 
can that promise be fulfilled if millions of families are 
sent to never-ending torment, or if even one family is 
rent forever asunder ? It is a universal promise ; there 
is no reservation. 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. S7 

In the prophecy of Isaiah we read as follows : " Look 
unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth ; for 
I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by my- 
self, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, 
and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, 
every tongue shall swear. Only in the Lord, shall one 
say unto me, is righteousness and strength : even to Him 
shall men come, and all they that were incensed against 
Him shall be ashamed" [Isa. 45 : 22-24, R- V.]. In this 
passage, God declares it to be His will that all people 
shall look unto Him and be saved ; then He declares 
that all people shall submit to his will, swearing loyalty 
unto Him, finding righteousness and strength in Him, and 
being ashamed that they were ever rebellious against 
Him. Could there be a stronger statement of Univer- 
salist doctrine ? 

A little further on in the prophecy of Isaiah we read, 
" Thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eter- 
nity whose name is Holy ... I will not contend forever, 
neither will I be always wroth : for the spirit should 
fail before me, and the souls which I have made . . . 
Peace, peace, to him that is far off, and to him that is 
near, saith the Lord ; and I will heal him" [Isa. 57 : 16, 
19]. To the same effect is the saying of Jeremiah, 
" The Lord will not cast off forever ; but though He 
cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the 
multitude of His mercies " [Lam. 3:31], and the declara- 
tion of Micah, that "He retaineth not His anger forever, 
because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, He 
will have compassion upon us ; He will subdue our in- 
iquities ; and Thou will cast all their sins into the depth 
of the sea" [Micah 7: 18-19]. The doctrine of ever- 



58 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

lasting punishment says that God will be angry forever 
with those sinners who do not repent in this world. 
The Old Testament prophets deny that assertion. They 
say that He will not be angry forever, but that He will 
subdue the iniquities of mankind, and heal them from the 
evil effects of their transgressions, and cause them to find 
righteousness and peace in obeying Him. And so the 
Psalmist says that " all the ends of the world shall re- 
member and turn unto the Lord " ; and that unto Him 
"shall all flesh come" [Ps. 22: 27; 65: 1]. Surely 
nothing less than universal salvation can fulfill the mean- 
ing of such statements. 

It is in the New Testament, however, that this doctrine 
is most frequently and plainly asserted, in connection 
with the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ. Consider 
first in that connection what was said by the angel who 
announced his birth to the shepherds as they watched 
their flocks on Bethlehem's plain. "Fear not," said the 
angel, "for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, 
which shall be to all people " [Luke 2 : 10]. How can 
the mission of Jesus Christ give great joy to all people 
unless all shall be saved ? What joy could his mission 
impart to those people who were to be forever rejected 
by him and given over to endless woe ? Evidently, if 
all mankind are to rejoice in him, all mankind must be 
saved. 

Again, observe what John the Baptist said. Said he, 
" I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Pre- 
pare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill 
shall be brought low ; and the crooked shall be made 
straight ; and the rough ways shall be made smooth ; and 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 59 

all flesh shall see the salvation of God [Luke 3:5,6]; 
and, when he saw Jesus on the banks of the Jordan, he 
said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin 
of the world" [John 1 : 29]. In both of those sayings he 
echoed the angelic message of universal blessedness as the 
result of Christ's ministry — the sin of the whole world to 
be taken away, and all flesh to see the salvation of God. 

Did the Saviour himself contradict or confirm what his 
forerunners had said on this subject ? He emphatically 
confirmed it. He said, "The Son of man is come to 
seek and to save that which was lost" [Luke 19: 10]; 
and again, " God sent not His Son into the world to 
condemn the world, but that the world through him 
might be saved" [John 3 : 17]; and again, "The Father 
loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand " 
[John 3 : 35] ; and again, "All that the Father giveth 
me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will 
in no wise cast out. And this is the Father's will which 
hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me, I 
should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day " 
[John 6: 35-37]; and again, "And I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto me" [John 12: 
32]. If all men are lost, and Jesus came to seek and to 
save that which was lost, and God hath given all things 
into his hand, and of all that is given him he shall lose 
nothing, but, having been crucified, shall draw all men 
to himself, how can we make anything else of his mission 
but an efficient provision for the salvation of all men ? 
The everlasting loss of a single soul would make those 
words of Christ untrue. He plainly taught that no soul 
will be forever lost, not only in the passages which I 
have already quoted, but also in the parables of the 



60 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

lost sheep and the lost piece of money. If all but one 
of* the great family of humanity were saved, and that 
one were astray, Christ's mission would be unfulfilled, 
and he would give his loving soul no rest until that last 
lost one were found and brought home. 

The apostles had no doubt that all will be saved. 
Listen to what the apostle Paul says : 

" As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be 
made alive" [I. Cor. 15 : 22]. 

" For as by one man's disobedience the many were 
made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall the many 
be made righteous" [Rom. 5 : 19, R. V.]. 

" It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness 
dwell ; and having made peace through the blood of his 
cross, by him to reconcile all things unto Himself " [Col. 
1 : 19, 20]. 

"That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He 
might gather together in one all things in Christ " [Eph. 
1 : 10]. 

"Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and 
given him the name which is above every name : that in 
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth ; 
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is 
Lord to the glory of God the Father" [Phil. 2:9-11, 
R. V.]. 

" For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God 
our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved and to 
come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one 
God, and one mediator between God and men, the man 
Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, to be 
testified in due time " [I. Tim. 2 : 3-5]. 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 6l 

" And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then 
shall the Son also himself be subject unto Him that put 
all things under him, that God may be all in all" [I. Cor. 
15:28]. 

In these passages of Scripture, taken from different 
letters of the great apostle of the Gentiles, there is a 
cumulative force of Universalist doctrine, each passage 
receiving support from the others. It is not possible to 
affirm the doctrine in more forcible terms. 

The apostle John is no less explicit in declaring the 
final salvation of all men. " We have seen and do tes- 
tify," says he, " that the Father sent the Son to be the 
Saviour of the world " [I. John 4 : 14] ; and again, " He 
is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but 
also for the sins of the whole world" [I. John 2:2]; 
and finally, "I beheld and I heard the voice of many 
angels round about the throne, and the number of them 
was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of 
thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb 
that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, 
and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. And 
every creature which is in heaven, and on earth, and 
under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that 
are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and 
glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever" [Rev. 
5: n-13]. 

Thus we see that the angelic messenger, John the 
Baptist, St. Paul, and St. John, all agree with Christ him- 
self in declaring that his redemptive work shall embrace 
the souls of all mankind, and not stop short of a perfect 
victory ; and that they all agree with the original promise 



62 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

in Genesis, that the seed of woman shall bruise the ser- 
pent's head. Throughout the whole Bible, from begin- 
ning to end, from the first book to the last one, there 
runs a chain of glorious promises, all indicating the cer- 
tainty of universal salvation. Beginning in Genesis with 
a figurative promise that evil shall be exterminated and 
mankind not be fatally wounded thereby, it ends in Reve- 
lation with a magnificent declaration that every creature in 
the universe shall unite in a joyful psalm of praise, ascribing 
blessing, and honor, and glory, and power to God and to 
Christ. Like the theme of an oratorio, this glorious truth 
pervades the Bible, sometimes more prominently heard 
than at other times, sometimes apparently submerged 
altogether, but never really set aside or denied or for- 
gotten. Its undertone is always there, and the Bible is 
held together by it. It is that which, more than anything 
else, makes the Bible one Book, one harmonious whole. 

If there are in the Bible any statements which seem 
to conflict with this truth, the solution of the difficulty 
must be found in a more careful examination of those 
statements, not in a denial of the promises which warrant 
us in believing it. For, as Paul asserts, " All the prom- 
ises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen" [II. Cor. 
i : 20]. They cannot be disannulled by any threatenings 
of punishment [Gal. 3 : 17]. The promises are the main 
thing ; the threatenings are subordinate, and must be 
interpreted accordingly. 

Guided by that eminently Scriptural principle, the 
founders of the Universalist church very carefully exam- 
ined every Scriptural statement which is supposed to 
support the doctrine of everlasting damnation, and found 
that in every instance the supposition was based on a 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 6$ 

false assumption or a mistranslation of the original lan- 
guage. The majority of those passages in our authorized 
version contain the words "everlasting," "damnation," 
and "hell," all of which are mistranslations. Modern 
scholars, of other churches, are now freely admitting 
what Universalist theologians have maintained from the 
beginning in regard to this matter. Said Archdeacon 
Farrar, in his volume entitled "Eternal Hope," published 
before the revised version of the Bible was printed, 
"Now I ask you, my brethren, where would be these 
popular teachings about hell, if we calmly and deliberately, 
by substituting the true translations, erased from our 
English Bibles, as being inadequate, or erroneous, or dis- 
puted renderings, the three words 'damnation,' 'hell/ 
and ' everlasting ' ? Yet I say, unhesitatingly, that not 
one of these three expressions ought to stand any longer 
in our English Bibles, and that being simply mistransla- 
tions, they most unquestionably will not stand unexplained 
in the revised version of the Bible, if the revisers have 
understood their duty" ["Eternal Hope," p. jy\ The re- 
visers have justified this prophecy in regard to the word 
" hell " by leaving two of the three original terms untrans- 
lated, — viz., sheol and hades, — and giving the other one, 
gehenna, in a marginal note. They have also used the 
word "judgment" instead of "damnation," and in some 
instances have explained the Greek word aion, whose ad- 
jective, aionios y is incorrectly rendered by the word 
"everlasting" in the authorized version. They should 
have gone still further in the line of revision ; but their 
work, so far as it goes, confirms the scholarship of the 
fathers of the Universalist church. Gradually the truth 
of God's word as to the punishment of sinners, which 



64 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

more than a hundred years ago was seen by the fathers 
of the Universalist church, is being seen and acknowl- 
edged by Biblical students in nearly all of the other de- 
nominations of Christendom. 

That truth is concisely stated in the message which 
was given to the church in Laodicea, " As many as I love, 
I rebuke and chasten : be zealous, therefore, and repent" 
[Rev. 3 : 19]. It is also stated, more at length, by the 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he says, 
" We have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, 
and we gave them reverence : shall we not much rather 
be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live ? For 
they verily for a few days chastened us after their own 
pleasure ; but He for our profit, that we might be par- 
takers of His holiness. Now no chastening for the 
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous ; nevertheless 
afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness 
unto them which are exercised thereby " [Heb. 12 : 9-1 1]. 
There is no afterward to eternity. Everlasting punish- 
ment would therefore defeat the very object for which 
God punishes sinners, according to the Bible. 

The fact is, God's threat enings of punishment always 
have the same purpose as the message which He com- 
manded Jonah to cry against Nineveh. Jonah supposed 
that the people of Nineveh had sinned away the grace of 
God, and that nothing remained for them but the con- 
sequences of His anger against them. In that he was 
mistaken, as all persons are who imagine that there is a 
limit to the mercy of God. His mercy is everlasting ; and 
all of the punishment which He threatens or inflicts upon 
sinners, in this or any other world, is meant for their own 
profit, to bring them to repentance, to deter them com- 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 65 

mitting any further transgressions, and to make them 
holy, as He is holy. 

Instead of being inconsistent with the salvation of all 
men, His threatenings, rightly understood, are a powerful 
argument for it ; inasmuch as they indicate His hatred of 
sin and His determination that mankind shall not forever 
remain in it. They are to His promises precisely what 
His severity is to His goodness, or the law to the gospel, 
a schoolmaster to bring us through Christ to Himself 
(Gal. iii. 21-24). They show that His love is not a weak 
love, like that of some foolish human parents who indul- 
gently permit their children to disobey with impunity, but 
a strong love, which inexorably insists that mankind shall 
be righteous, and which, when they will not yield to 
pleading, does not hesitate to make use of more forcible 
means. They mean that He has no pleasure in the death 
of the wicked, but that the wicked shall turn from their 
ways and live. They mean that He will enforce His 
promises : that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things 
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, can 
separate us from His love, but that He will have us to be 
saved, though as by fire. They mean that, having made 
us for Himself, and having sworn by Himself that we 
shall be His faithful, loving subjects, He is prepared to 
carry out his purpose, though He slay us in the process, 
and bring us back again, as it were, from the dead. 

Were it not for the threatenings of the Bible, we might 
question whether its promises would be put into effect ; 
but when we learn with what penalties God will follow 
transgressors, to burn the wickedness out of them, we 
cannot doubt that His purpose will prevail in the end. It 



66 UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 

is said that two rabbis, approaching Jerusalem after its 
downfall, observed a fox on Mt. Zion, whereupon one of 
them, Rabbi Joshua, wept ; but Rabbi Eliezer laughed. 
" Wherefore dost thou laugh ? " said he who wept. " Nay, 
wherefore dost thou weep ? " replied the other. " I weep," 
said Rabbi Joshua, " because I see what is written in the 
Lamentations fulfilled : because of the Mount of Zion 
which is desolate ; the foxes walk upon it." " And there- 
fore do I laugh," said Rabbi Eliezer, " for when I see with 
my own eyes that God has fulfilled his threatenings to the 
letter, I have thereby a pledge that not one of His 
promises shall fail ; for He is ever more ready to show 
mercy than judgment." Rabbi Eliezer had the right of 
the matter. The threatenings of the Bible do not con- 
tradict its promises ; they buttress and strengthen them : 
and the punishments which God inflicts on those who dis- 
obey His laws will be instrumental, sooner or later, in 
bringing them to repentance, that His love may be ac- 
cepted by them, and that their contrite souls may sin no 
more. The Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus denounced 
for their sins, saying, " How can ye escape the judgment 
of Gehenna ? " or, according to the authorized version, 
" How can ye escape the damnation of hell ? " are among 
those of whom St. Paul declares that, having been cut off 
for their unbelief, they shall be grafted in again, when 
the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come into the 
kingdom, and that so all Israel shall be saved (Rom. 1 1 : 
20-26). They are among the "all men "whom Christ 
has said that he will draw to himself, 

Throughout and thoroughly, the Bible is a Universalist 
book. It was so understood by the great majority of 
Christians during the first five centuries of our era. Only 



UNIVERSALISM AND THE BIBLE. 67 

when its light began to be obscured by the introduction of 
heathenish elements into the affairs of the church — and 
when, as a consequence, the dark ages came on — did it 
cease to be so understood. Thank God that the truth, 
so long hidden from view, is again breaking forth with its 
primal effulgence. Let us accept it, and rejoice in it, and 
frame our conduct accordingly. The Bible, so interpreted, 
is profitable indeed for doctrine, for correction, for instruc- 
tion in righteousness ; and with that interpretation of it, 
we can truthfully say, 

" It is the one true light 
When other lights grow dim ; 
'Twill never shine less purely bright, 
Nor lead astray from Him." 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

By REV. Q. H. SHINN, D. D. 

The word Destiny distinguishes us from Christians of 
other churches. We believe in a good destiny for all. 
We believe God will make all his bad children good ; he 
wants to, and he can. He has the disposition, the power, 
the means, and the time. If love is all conquering, there 
is no foe it will not subdue, not even the rebellious will 
of man. We believe more than our brethren of other 
churches, not less. No faith is so grand or complete as 
ours, and yet so misunderstood. All benevolent people 
want it to be true, but think it is too good to be true. 
The selfish man hopes for something better, and looks 
forward to it, for himself. The benevolent man — and 
every Christian is one — is looking forward to something 
better for all the other members of the great family ; and 
he will never be satisfied and perfectly happy until there 
is something better for all. Questions asked every day 
betray the general ignorance prevailing as to the beliefs 
of Universalism. People ask if we believe in God, if we 
believe in Christ, if we believe in the Bible, if we believe 
in a hereafter, if we believe in prayer, and even if we 
believe in punishment, — when I know of no Christian 
people who emphasize as strongly as we do the absolute 
certainty of punishment. It seems to be the opinion of 
most all Christian people that our church is founded upon 

68 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 69 

negations, whereas our affirmations express stronger faith 
than that professed by any other church on earth. And 
now it is my purpose to call attention to some of these 
great affirmations. 

The text will be found in John's Gospel, 6 : 44, 45 : 
" No man can come to me, except the Father which hath 
sent me draw him ; and I will raise him up at the last 
day. It is written in the prophets, and they shall be all 
taught of God. Every man, therefore, that hath heard, 
and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me." 

According to this declaration of our Master, no man 
can come to him until moved upon by the divine spirit ; 
he can do nothing of himself, nothing till drawn by the 
Father. This completely explodes the free-will doctrine 
we hear so much about. Then Jesus declares that all shall 
be taught of God — shall — and tells what the result will 
be : " Every man that hath heard," — all shall hear, — 
"and hath learned of the Father," — all shall learn, — 
"cometh unto me." Do you observe that the doom of 
all sinful men is here pronounced ? They are doomed to 
come unto him. When he said, " I will draw all men unto 
me," he pronounced the same doom. Speaking of those 
outside the fold, he said : "Them also I must bring, and 
they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and 
one shepherd." He dooms them to come in ! Most all 
our preachers doom them to stay out. I know you may 
refer me to his words in Matthew 26, where he says, 
"These shall go away into everlasting punishment," and 
" Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared 
for the Devil and his angels." As I understand these 
words, they are in perfect harmony with the text I have 
quoted. What is the significance of the word " everlast- 



JO AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

ing" in the Bible ? It is applied to things which have 
come to an end, and to things which must in their nature 
come to an end. Therefore it does not signify endless 
duration. Besides, the word " everlasting," or " eternal," 
is from aion, which means age ; and frequently our 
Saviour spoke of the end of the aion, or age. Surely 
he would not speak of the end of a period of time that 
has no end. This is the significance of these threats 
uttered against those who were so shriveled in selfishness 
that they refused bread to the hungry and water to the 
thirsty, refused to take the stranger in, clothe the naked, 
visit the sick, and go to those in prison. They must be 
cured! Punishment is administered to cure, and must 
last till it has accomplished its purpose. This is the full 
meaning of the everlasting punishment in the passage 
under consideration. And the everlasting fire has great 
significance. It means that the selfishness of those 
people was to be destroyed, burned out. " Devil and his 
angels " are figurative terms, to intensify the burning 
process, the fires of remorse that would continue until 
those guilty souls were cleansed, purged, purified. Re- 
member, the fire symbol in the Bible means this. Fire is 
an agent of destruction and an emblem of purification. 
See First Corinthians 3: 11-15 and Hebrews 12: 29. 
So, then, these threats, that seem so awful, mean what 
the promises mean, namely that all sinful souls shall be 
cured. 

A few words more in connection with the text. The 
messenger to sinful souls, what truth must he interpret 
that will turn them from their evil ways ? This great 
truth Christ revealed about God. While alienated by 
sin, a man feels the sense of loneliness, as did the Prodi- 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. fl 

gal Son ; and out of his sense of desertion he will say, 
" I have no friends, no one cares for me, no one loves me. 
I have no man in all the world who sympathizes with 
me." Then the messenger of Christ's gospel will assure 
him that there is one being who cares for him, and loves 
him, and sympathizes with him ; that being is his Heaveniy 
Father. This truth must be interpreted to the sinful 
soul, he must understand it. And what will be the 
result ? He will want to be a better child. Filial emo- 
tions will be awakened in his soul. He will turn his face 
toward the Father's house. He will resolve to be a 
dutiful child of that Heavenly Father. Then he will 
come to Christ — gladly embrace the principles of his 
religion. This, friends, is the strong affirmation of our 
text. All shall be taught of God; all shall hear and 
understand ; all shall learn of the Father ; and then, as 
the Master said, "they will come to me." 

All means universal, Universalism means all. It is 
from the word universe. There is nothing good in the 
universe which it does not include. As a system of belief 
it includes all that is good and true in all religious ancient 
and modern, in all systems, in all philosophies, in all 
churches, in all worlds, and in all the universe. I accept 
the Christian religion as the infallible, the authoritative 
religion, because it takes up into itself and embodies all 
that is good and true ; excludes only that which is false. 
There are but few Christians to-day who will not agree 
with us in the universality of the Christian religion in 
respect to its provisions. Its provisions, they say, are 
universal, but not its results. We affirm that it will be 
universal in its results. If not so, the provisions are 
inadequate, therefore not universal. And until all Chris- 



72 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

tians shall come to believe that the religion of Christ will 
be universal in its results, the denominational name we 
bear must be retained, distinguishing us from Christians 
of other sects. Only in this sense, therefore, are we 
under obligation to remain sectarian. Loyalty to truth 
demands it of us. 

There is truth in all churches, and error too. If any 
church assumes infallibility, that it is right and all others 
are wrong, that church is guilty of colossal egotism. 
There is no infallible church. If a man assumes he 
knows all there is worth knowing, and shuts himself 
against all the open avenues of truth and knowledge, he 
is guilty of monumental conceit ! How superficial such 
a man ! Great thinkers, the ripest scholars, are humble 
men because they know so little. They are men who 
know enough to know how little they know. I believe 
the Methodists have some truth, and the Baptists and 
the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians, and possibly the 
Catholics. I believe the Universalists have a little, not 
much. But Universalism, this system of faith, includes all 
the truth that all churches have. Do not misunderstand 
me. I am not saying that we have all the truth. We 
know but little. Universalism includes the little we have 
learned and all there is to be learned. It includes all 
that all men know and all that they don't know. Now, if 
a partialist ever suffers himself to say a word against Uni- 
versalism, he says that word against all the truth he has ; 
for it is part of the whole. I am sure that I cannot be 
misunderstood when I say we believe more than any 
other Christians. We do if the whole is greater than a 
part. We stand for the whole. Our system of faith 
must include all truth that has been discovered, and all 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 73 

that is yet to be discovered. Hence it is a progressive 
faith. 

I trust the way is now prepared for a more specific 
statement of our affirmations. 

1. We believe in this world, in the book of nature. 
All the laws of nature are God's laws, and are working 
out his purposes. They point to fulfillment, to victory, 
and not to defeat. This glorious prophecy is in every 
movement and evolution witnessed by the eye of science. 
The divine writing is on every page of this great volume ; 
earth and cloud and sky all teaching the ways of God. 
Everywhere is the impress of benevolence and the radi- 
ance of eternal beauty. What a joy to live in God's 
beautiful world, with its teaming fields and waving forests 
and fruitful valleys and towering mountains and flowing 
streams ! How thankful must we be for the thronging 
delights in this lower mansion of our Father's House. 
Let us cultivate a love for this world, and try to live here 
and enjoy it as long as we can. Its victories will fit us 
for higher victories, and there will be compensations for 
its defeats. Restorative and compensating laws are ever 
active, making good the losses. Science, penetrating to 
the heart of nature and unsealing its hidden laws, teaches 
man that there is but one force, with different manifesta- 
tions. It manifests itself in magnetism, in electricity, in 
heat and motion, in chemical afnrmity, etc. ; but there is 
but one great central force, and that is good. Way back 
in the benighted past, man, lacking foresight to see how 
the discords and conflicts of nature would result in har- 
mony, came to ascribe things he called evil to evil 
beings ; hence the world's belief in devils, ghosts, hob- 
goblins, and witches. All these are perishing ; the light 
of science is killing them. 



74 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

Should one atom get beyond the reach of this one 
force, there would be endless, discord in the universe. 
Should one soul get beyond the reach of this one force 
— and what shall we call it now ? The force behind all 
forces and all worlds is love ; if God is love, should one 
soul get beyond the reach of this Almighty force of love 
so that it is unable to draw it back, win it back, then 
there would be two forces in the universe, eternal dis- 
cord. We believe no such catastrophe can happen. 
Nature means victory. Therefore we read Universalisrh 
from this book. Every law operative here, and all the 
laws relating our world to other worlds, are prophetic of 
victory. Nowhere in this universe do we read a proph- 
ecy of defeat. 

2. Universalism affirms belief in human nature, another 
book whose writings point to victory. We stand for the 
worth of man. Fashioned in God's image, man is of in- 
finite value, worth more in the sight of God than all the 
stars of heaven. The divine Fatherhood means this. 
Though yet a child, incomplete, imperfect, wayward, man 
bears the image of God, which image God himself cannot 
destroy or lose ; God cannot destroy a thing that is inde- 
structible. Wrapped up in this divine embryo are capa- 
cities and powers that fit man for endless growth and 
progress ; for, between man the finite, and God the in- 
finite, there is scope for a progression that can never end. 
What joy in believing this ; for man is truly happy only 
when he is growing, and here is assurance of endless 
growth. In this sense the spiritual perfection reached 
by God's children will be relative, not absolute. There 
is but one absolute Being, and we may approximate his 
perfection forever. 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 75 

Man is not made, he is making. Those who have 
made greatest progress are still in the Father's primary 
school. There will be higher departments, one grade 
leading to another, on and up forever. The school of 
God will never let out. 

What are all the attainments man has yet made, and 
marvelous they are, as compared with the attainments he 
is capable of making ? As the ratio between a grain of 
sand and this globe ! Think ! The greatest and wisest 
have only made a little beginning in this world. Not 
one germ of power is unfolded to its utmost limit ; and 
there will remain countless capacities yet latent, when we 
go from these scenes into the great world awaiting us. 
The best, the most advanced and ripened, will need more 
time ; and what of the myriads who make no beginning in 
this life. How we should exult because God has plenty 
of time, because he has eternity to train his children in ! 
We stand as a church vindicating man because of his 
power, and because of his worth and his incompleteness 
and the possibilities of his divine son ships. 

We need only to know the meaning of Fatherhood to 
to be assured of God's regard for his children. In his 
Sermon on the Mount, our Saviour calls the Supreme 
Being Father or Heavenly Father sixteen times. Some 
take the position that God is not the Father of evil men, 
but in this sermon the Master says he is. If he is not, 
we are all spiritual orphans, and have no right to say the 
Lord's Prayer ; and how guilty of inconsistency when we 
go down among the wicked, teaching them to say this 
prayer if God is not their Heavenly Father. 

Universalism affirms belief in inherent immortality. 
Without this divine inheritance what can man do to be- 



j6 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

come immortal ? No more than a tree. The trouble is, 
Christian people have failed to make a distinction between 
immortal life and eternal life. It was a part of Christ's 
mission to reveal immortality, but no part of his mission 
to create it. Immortal life has reference to duration ; 
eternal life to quality. Said Jesus, " This is life eternal, 
to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom 
thou hast sent." Then it is spiritual knowledge, or love 
in the soul. This it was Christ's mission to create. 
Were this simple fact understood the doctrine of condi- 
tional immortality, that it is acquired through faith in 
Christ, would soon vanish from the minds of men. 

Another way to understand the worth of man in the 
sight of God is to think of the value of our children to 
us. Go to that mother with her little one a month old ; 
offer her all the gold and silver and diamonds ever taken 
from the earth. Closer to her bosom she will press her 
darling, and refuse the wealth you offer. We rise into 
the region of higher values. Charley Ross's father went 
over the world, crossing seas and continents, for twenty 
years and more in weary and fruitless search for his boy. 
He died without finding Charley. I believe he will take 
up the search on the other shore, and that there will be 
no true happiness for him in any world until he finds his 
lost child. This is the nature of love, true parental love. 
Every man is a child of God ; and however sinful he may 
become, he can do nothing to diminish God's love for 
him. 

I know we meet with many things to stagger our 
faith. In many semblances of human beings we see no 
sign of the divine image. To our sight nothing good is 
visible. We look on the outward appearance ; God sees 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 77 

within. The image is there, whether we see it or not. I 
visited a paper-mill in Maine, desiring to witness all the 
processes. I asked at a certain point why I could not 
see the water-mark. The workman answered, it must go 
through this process and that, explaining them all ; then 
after it is finished and polished, said he, " you can see 
the water-mark." So it is with the soul disfigured or 
hidden by sin. It must pass through the different pro- 
cesses of divine grace, be washed and cleansed ; then the 
divine image will appear. A lady showed me a dry and 
shriveled root she had received by mail ; and she said if 
I would call in a few weeks I would see a beautiful tube- 
rose filling the room with fragrance. It seemed impos- 
sible. I saw no sign of life or beauty or fragrance in 
the root so seemingly dead. But in a few weeks I saw 
and sensed the beautiful flower. Before plucking that 
water-lily, so exquisite in grace and sweetness, you follow 
down the long stem, and bring up a handful of dark, 
slimy mud. You must confess the lily came from that. 
Now, if the sun-rays could penetrate that water so impure, 
and the dark unsightly earth, and bring out a flower of 
such delicate beauty and fragrance, why can you not be- 
lieve that the rays from the Sun of Righteousness will 
penetrate the darkened souls of men and finding the hid- 
den germs of divinity, kindle them into bloom and fruit ? 

We stand for the worth of man. The child, however 
frail, is of infinite value in his Father's sight. God has 
given to not one of his children power to sin himself out 
of existence or beyond the reach of love ; and no human 
being has power to defeat the purpose of the Infinite 
One ! Every soul is worth saving, and will be saved. 

3. There is another book Universalists believe in. 



78 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

Most heartily we believe in the Bible, and we stand for 
the spiritual interpretation of the sacred volume. We 
go beneath figurative speech, metaphor, symbol, parable. 
Surface students, by literalizing these, have missed the 
deep meanings, and builtup doctrines contrary to the 
great principles disclosed in this book. When reasoning 
from these three great books, the book of nature, the 
book of human nature, and the book of revelation, we get 
our ideas of life and destiny, and proclaim them to the 
world, conyinced that these three books agree. How 
often we meet with such words as these : " Oh, yes, your 
doctrines are grand, I would like to believe them ; but how 
can I ! for there is the Bible." Then the Bible, they 
think, contradicts the book of human nature. If this is 
correct, God writes one revelation in the hearts of his 
children and on the pages of nature's volume, and another 
in a book ; divided against himself. Friends, when inter- 
preted by its general tone and spirit, the Bible supports 
Universalism most strongly. It is a book of hope, a book 
of victory. From beginning to end its Universalism 
shines forth. Temporary defeats are recognized as com- 
ing to men, but not final. And when God is recognized, 
when his guiding hand is seen, there is no such thing 
intimated as defeat or failure. The whole trend is toward 
victory. Notes of melody, strains of hope, songs of vic- 
tory, rise and throb, and blend in anthems of rapture, and 
the glad refrain goes pulsing on. In the first pages we 
have a prophecy of victory. The truth, symboled by the 
seed of the woman, should crush the serpent's head ; sym- 
bol of all that is bad in man. In the very last chapter, in 
that book of visions, that same prophecy glows in more 
exultant strains. We see standing by the river, clear as 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 79 

crystal, the tree of life, called the tree of life because it 
will never die. " And its leaves are for the healing of 
the nations." That means final Universal cure. 

Many Christians, no doubt, are sincere in believing 
that there are other scriptures which contradict all this. 
The misinterpretation and misapplication of metaphorical 
language, Oriental parables and symbolry, has been very 
misleading. For example : The Garden of Eden has 
been literalized, and made to teach the fall of man, 
whereas it is an allegory, teaching the rise of man. It 
illustrates man's beginnings in moral education. Before 
the moral law began to act, man stood down on the ani- 
mal plane. There was nothing alive but the animal part. 
The first motion or movement of the moral law found ex- 
pression in the sense of modesty. They began to make 
clothes for themselves, using first the leaves of fig-trees, 
and soon they are making coats of skins. The awaken- 
ing of the moral sense lifts them above the animal plane. 
Now they know the difference between right and wrong. 
Is not this a rise ? Only moral beings know moral dis- 
tinctions. So we stand for the rise and perfection of 
man, not his fall and ruin. Again, many Christians have 
been led to believe that this physical world is coming to 
an end. There are seven passages in which the end of 
the world is spoken of ; but in each one the word world 
is translated from aion, which means age. There is not 
a passage in the Bible in which the end of the cosmos is 
spoken of. All religious teachers ought to know this. 
The Jewish age, or dispensation, was coming to an end. 
And it did come to an end when Jesus said it would, 
in that generation. And it should be remarked here that 
Christ's coming was spoken of in connection with that 



80 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

event. His spiritual kingdom would have a new impetus 
when the great enemy, the Jewish nationality, would be 
overthrown. His truth would be signalized with greater 
power in the world. So Jesus, foreseeing this, spoke of 
his spiritual coming in connection with that event. The 
last two verses of the sixteenth chapter of Matthew 
should be the key of interpretation to all other passages 
in which the coming of Christ is spoken of : " For the 
Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his 
angels, and then he shall reward every man according to 
his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some stand- 
ing here which shall not taste of death till they see the 
Son of man coming in his kingdom." What are we to 
think of the intelligence of a man who is looking for that 
corning ? Are there people living now who were living 
then ? 

As superficial have been the interpretations of Chris- 
tian people concerning the atonement and the trinity. 
The doctrine of vicarious atonement is not taught in the 
Bible, nor the doctrine of the trinity. 

And I am sure that there is not a passage of Scripture 
that so much as hints the doctrine of endless punishment. 
As we have seen, everlasting does not mean endless 
duration in the Bible. There is not a word in the Scrip- 
tures, which means endless duration, applied to punish- 
ment, or to sin, or to death. 

There is no time to say more on this point. My con- 
tention is this : The book of revelation, rightly inter- 
preted, agrees with all other books of God, teaching, 

" One God, one law, one element, 
One far-off, divine event, 
Toward which the whole Creation moves." 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 8 1 

4. Universalism affirms a perfect God. He is good. 
He is perfectly good. He is love. He is perfect love. 
He is Father. He is a perfect Father. He is perfect in 
all his attributes. Calvinism limits his goodness. Sim- 
plified, it says : God can save all men, but he does not 
want to. Arminianism limits his power. It says : he 
wants to save all men, but cannot. And how glaring is 
the limitation of his wisdom according to the superficial 
free-will argument so often met with ! We are told that 
God will not save a man against his will, that he cannot 
save an unwilling soul. What Universalist ever taught 
that God will save a man against his will ? He does not 
save men that way, by arbitrary force ; that is not his 
method. He saves men by their wills, through moral 
influence. Strange people cannot be made to under- 
stand that God has resources in his universe, the all- 
conquering agencies of love, to make the unwilling soul 
willing ! He has light enough to make the blind see, 
and love enough to melt the hardened heart. See now 
how the free-will argument limits the wisdom of God. 
He is omniscient, all -knowing. Then from the beginning 
he knew when he made man a free moral agent that he 
was giving him power to defeat the divine purpose, giving 
his child power to work out his own eternal ruin and 
shatter the throne of Heaven ; knew that he was giving 
his child a power which he himself could not control. In 
other words, a power was bestowed on man mightier than 
the Almighty. That is, God made man stronger than 
himself. What are we to think of his wisdom ? Doesn't 
this limit the divine wisdom ? Now, then, when we limit 
God's goodness or power or wisdom, we make him an 
imperfect God. If God is not perfect, there is no God. 
So this is atheism. Make what else of it you can. 



82 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

Universalists are not atheists, because they believe in 
a perfect God, a God who will not be defeated. What 
means the divine Fatherhood ? He chastens his children 
as sons, punishes them for their good. If endless, how 
plainly it would defeat his purpose. Strange people can- 
not see this ! Under the divine government punishment 
is spiritual medicine. What its purpose ? Love punishes 
to cure. Remember three things right here. Love 
never changes ; love never lets go ; love punishes to 
cure. Remember six points in punishment, (a) Its 
nature: it is spiritual medicine, {b) Its object: it is 
administered as a remedy, to cure, (c) Its certainty : 
the medicine must be given. To withhold it would de- 
feat the cure. The common scheme of salvation we hear 
so much about would defeat salvation, (d) Its duration : 
it will stop when it has accomplished its purpose. Love 
never measures by time nor by quantity, but by results, 
(e) The time : now, when the sin is committed, unless 
the soul has reached a state of moral insensibility, in 
which case there would be a suspension until the soul 
came to itself. In this event, for sins repeated and per- 
sisted in, punishment would be cumulative. When the 
judgment day comes, more intense, more terrible, the 
remorse, the pain. But for the good of the sinning soul. 
All God's judgments are good. They are not to hurt, 
but to bless, not to drive away, but to draw back his 
wayward child. And always and everywhere the throne 
of judgment is the moral law in the bosom of man. 
(/). The place : wherever the guilty soul is. Place 
does not constitute heaven or hell. These are conditions. 
With heaven within, the immortal world will be heaven. 
It is so here. And these spiritual laws will never change. 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 83 

How does God punish his sinful children ? Through the 
action of the moral law. If his disobedient children do 
not receive medicine enough to cure them in this world, 
they will get it in the next. How ? In the same way ; 
through the action of the moral law. And that, being 
a part of our spiritual structure, we will take with us 
wherever we go. If it is left behind we cease to be 
moral beings. As well claim that God will change his 
method because we cross a State line as because we 
exchange this world for another. 

I have considered the subject of punishment thus in 
detail, hoping to make its nature and object clear. A 
perfect Father, all loving and merciful, punishes his way- 
ward children because he loves them, consequently for 
their profit. 

5. Universalists believe in a victorious Savior. We 
do not believe in the Deity of Christ, but in his divinity. 
If he were the " very God " how could he increase in 
wisdom ? And we would have no example, no spiritual 
pattern. An absolute being cannot be an example for a 
finite being. Knowing we cannot reach the infinite, we 
have nothing to stimulate us to strive for perfection. 
The mission of Christ was to disclose the Heavenly 
Father to his children, and make his love a saving power. 
He did not create the Father's love. He revealed it. 
It was his mission to make Christians, not to save them. 
To become a Christian is to be saved. It is not going 
somewhere ; it is becoming something. To express it all 
in a sentence, the mission of Christ was to aire all men 
of sin. We are Universalists because we believe he will 
accomplish the work he came to do ; he will succeed. We 
believe it for three reasons : (a) He has medicine enough 



84 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

to cure all. (b) He has sufficient skill to administer the 
medicine, (c) He has sufficient time to administer the 
medicine in. So we can sing consistently about the good 
physician. He will never save a good man. To become 
good is to be saved. He will never save a righteous man. 
To be saved is not going somewhere after one becomes 
righteous ; it is becoming righteous. Christ has no more 
to do with getting men to heaven, in the sense of a place 
in another world, than he has to do with getting them 
across the Mississippi River. To believe, then, in a Uni- 
versal Savior, a triumphant Savior, is to believe more in 
Christ than any other Christian people. And so we sing 
our glad song of victory. The lost, Christ came to seek 
and save ; but these the very people he came to save, and 
needing salvation most, some Christians think he will 
lose. Universalism makes its strong affirmation that 
Jesus will save, redeem from sin, all the lost ! 

6. Universalism affirms a good destiny for the entire 
human race. At the outset I dwelt upon this distin- 
guishing feature of our faith. A few additional words I 
think are necessary for the reason that, however clear we 
make to ourselves our views touching destiny, we are 
still confronted, and how frequently, with the old question, 
" What will become of wicked people who die in their 
sins ? " The idea seems fixed in the minds of people that 
God can do nothing for his sinful children after they 
leave this world. Now, the relationship existing between 
the spiritual Father and his children is spiritual. Death 
cannot change it. Death cannot separate us from the 
love of God, said the great apostle. Has redeeming 
love physical limitations ? Will we get beyond its reach 
by going to another world ? It would be as reasonable to 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 85 

confine its action to New York, or even to Rhode Island, 
as to confine it to this world. 

What, then, is our answer to this question so perplexing 
to many anxious souls ? This : Those who are not cured 
in this world, and none are completely cured here, will be 
cured in the next. Old Orthodoxy says they will be sent 
to an eternal penitentiary. New Orthodoxy says they 
will establish themselves in endless rebellion against God, 
become eternal anarchists. The doctrine of annihilation, 
another phase of New Orthodoxy, says they will be 
blotted out of existence. Which answer can you best 
harmonize with the will and purpose and character of an 
infinitely good God ? Universalism answers, They will 
be cured. 

The doctrine of endless brutality, politely called eternal 
punishment, must be utterly abhorent to every thinking 
mind, revolting to every benevolent instinct. It is a hide- 
ous, ghastly, fiendish doctrine, heart-paralyzing, soul-stifling. 
It makes God infinitely worse than Nero, his malignancy 
transcending that of all the fiends of cruelty that ever 
lived. If true for only one soul, then that soul will re- 
ceive more pain from the hands of God than the whole 
human family have received from all the monsters of 
brutality that have cursed our world ; because there is no 
end to it. This doctrine is the great satanic blasphemy 
of the ages. Its ghastliness is monumental. It out- 
pagans the blackest paganism ! It ought to be a disgrace 
to preach the colossal infamy ! It should cause the most 
brutal savage to blush with shame to listen to it ! It has 
crushed more hearts, darkened more homes, caused more 
insanity and suffering and pain, it has made more infidels 
and atheists, than all other scourges that have ever deso- 



86 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

lated our fair world ! Oh, friends ! I can't do it justice. 
I only wish I could make all men see its hideousness as I 
see it, and hate the infamous thing as I hate it ! 

How sad to hear good, generous, kind-hearted people 
say they believe it ! They would be insane if they did. 
They are phonograph-Christians. They simply talk out 
what has been talked into them. No benevolent man, no 
man who has a soul in him, can sit down and think of the 
doctrine five minutes without discarding it forever. How 
benumbing to the sensibilities of good people ! When we 
ask them how they expect to be happy in heaven when 
their fellowmen, and possibly their own loved ones, are 
suffering in torment, and doomed to remain and suffer 
endless pain, they answer, " Oh, we will be so changed ! " 
This is the saddest thing I ever heard. Think what it 
means ! It means ossification of the heart. It means 
that they are to undergo a process of hardening, that they 
are to be robbed of love, robbed of all feeling and sym- 
pathy and tenderness and pity ! What a change ! Hearts 
tender here with Christ's compassion there will turn to 
stone. It means a world of eternal heartlessness. Whit- 
tier says, " If man goes to heaven without a heart, God 
knows he leaves behind his better part." 

Friends, I am more concerned about the destiny of 
saints, such as are to undergo this change, than the most 
wicked sinners that leave this world unsaved. In all 
reverence I ask, would you not ten thousand times rather 
be an asbestos sinner in the lowest hell with some feeling 
left than to be a petrified saint in heaven ? According 
to this common answer, holiness in heaven will consist in 
being wholly selfish ! 

Finally, we believe in a good destiny for all ; that God 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. Sy 

will cure all his sinful children, because He has the dis- 
position, the power, the means, and the time. Four good 
reasons. A million more might be given ; and no man 
can think of one single reason why he should not cure 
them. 

So we sing the glad song of victory. All the resources 
of the universe are pledged to the great consummation, 
God's character, and his infinite love. I love to think of 
the agencies we see now at work. Every exertion you 
put forth to make this world better is so much done to 
make our doctrine true. God works through instrumen- 
talities. We are all to be agents. A Universalist who is 
idle, doing nothing to make his doctrine true, is a 
counterfeit. 

Every deed of mercy that lessens pain ; every charity 
that assuages sorrow and distress ; every church that 
throws its arms of love around the wayfaring man ; every 
institution of learning that kindles thoughts of a higher 
world ; every new discovery disclosing larger visions of 
truth ; every fresh avenue of commerce opening wider 
channels for the diffusion of God's love ; every object les- 
son in this great outer world teaching God's bounty and 
care ; every flower preaching its sermon of beauty by the 
wayside ; every star that looks down from the upper deeps, 
kindling the sense of mystery and wonder in the human 
breast ; every cloud sleeping in the azure heights, serene 
with suggestions of peace ; every setting sun painting the 
sky, and turning to gold the retreating clouds ; every 
breeze that wafts the incense of healing and of hope ; 
every ray of light that breaks the films of sin, to let love 
into the hardened heart ; every drop of water that revives 
the drooping plant ; every fountain breaking from the 



88 AFFIRMATIONS OF UNIVERSALISM. 

mountain side ; every brooklet singing its glad song ; every 
sparkling lake catching in its dimples the colors of the 
sky ; every river flowing down and mingling in the sea ; 
every ocean that sends up its mists to fill the clouds — 
all teaching the goodness and bounty of God ; every 
experience that deepens human life ; every sorrow that 
sweetens the spirit ; every pain that chisels and refines ; 
every new-born hope lifting the tendrils of a shattered 
faith ; every anguish that plows the soul, cleansing the 
grosser man ; every defeat that breaks the defiant will ; 
every throb of sympathy pulsing from heart to heart ; 
every pang of remorse that makes sin ghastly, and turns 
its victim into the path of life; every blaze of light reveal- 
ing to groping souls the awful darkness that domes the 
sinner's sky ; every strain of music reviving sweet memo- 
ries of the past ; every sunny face that lights up the 
home of man ; every voice of childhood prattling the song 
of trust ; every angel God sends into this world to nurse 
back to life and health the lost of earth, and lead them up 
the celestial highway, the King's highway, from glory 
unto glory, and at last into the resplendent light of the 
perfect day, — all, all these are agents, messengers, in- 
struments, to fulfill the sublime prophecy of our Univer- 
salist faith, — final triumph, glorious victory ! — instru- 
ments breathed upon from higher worlds, and weaving 
their countless strains for the grand, triumphant, joyous, 
matchless symphony of God ! 

Oh ! friends, stand on these heights, catch this vision, 
sing this song, this glad new song ; voice it with the 
paeans of angelic choirs; let your glad and joyous strains 
blend with the music of the stars. Come down and sing 
it with the prophets of a larger day ; sing it with the 



AFFIRMATIONS OF UNI VERS A LIS M. 89 

poets of a sweeter tune ; chant it in the strains of Tenny- 
son : — 

" Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 

That not one life shall be destroyed, 

Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete, 

Behold, we know not anything ; 

I can but trust that good shall fall 

At last — far off — at last, to all, 
And every winter change to spring." 



QO SOME THOUGHTS OF A BUSINESS MAN 



SOME THOUGHTS OF A BUSINESS MAN 
CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 

By CHARLES L HUTCHINSON. 

We live in an age of business ; most of our social dis- 
tinctions rest upon wealth acquired in business life. It 
is the dominating life of the present generation. The 
successful business man is much sought after in society, 
in politics, and religion. In the eyes of the great majority 
of the people that man who has made a success of his 
business life has achieved that which is most desirable in 
this world. In many respects this is a state to be de- 
plored. Before we pronounce any venture successful 
we are apt to test it by applying to it the judgment of 
the business man. Before proceeding further it might be 
well for us to ask ourselves this question : What is suc- 
cess ? The word has many different meanings. We 
may not know the successful or the unsuccessful busi- 
ness man until we have determined for ourselves its true 
definition. Let us not make the fatal mistake of saying 
to ourselves that it means simply the accumulation of 
money. The multi-millionaires of the new world are not 
as a rule men of broad culture. If you desire to create 
for yourself a colossal fortune you will probably find it 
necessary to give your entire life to that end. You will 
find little time to read books, study art, or travel. Under 
these circumstances, when you have acquired a compe- 



CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 9 1 

tency you will no longer possess the ability to properly 
enjoy it. You will find that after all you have achieved 
the lowest form of success. That man who adjusts his 
life purely to his business or on commercial lines alone is 
not a highly organized human being. His success will 
be of a low order. Man has three environments, — the 
physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual. He alone 
achieves real success who adjusts his life to all three 
of these environments, who develops his nature on all 
sides. 

If you are fortunate enough to be wealthy, the great 
value of your money lies in the freedom which it brings. 
You are in a position to make the most of life ; but all 
depends upon the use you make of your wealth and leis- 
ure. You must have the ability to make intellectual 
and spiritual investments of your fortune. 

In the development of the spiritual life of the world, 
religion has always played an important part. Religion 
is not humanitarianism. Religion and culture are not the 
same ; no amount of culture can take the place of that 
vital religion that has faith in God ; that believes in the 
authority of righteousness ; that is interested in the wel- 
fare of man ; that is convinced that the gospel of the 
Lord Jesus Christ is a divinely appointed way of salva- 
tion. His gospel is a message, a spirit. It is not in- 
compatible with culture or the broadest knowledge. It 
is so simple that a child may be its most perfect embodi- 
ment. We believe this religion of Christ to be the high- 
est interpretation of the divine will yet given to man. 
We call it the Christian religion. We glory in its history, 
its traditions, and its work. The organized form of Chris- 
tianity upon earth, men call the church. Let us give a 



92 SOME THOUGHTS OF A BUSINESS MAN 

few moments to it. Four questions are at once sug- 
gested : First, What is the Christian church ? Second, 
What is the mission of the church ? Third, Has it ful- 
filled its mission ? Fourth, Has it a right to command 
our services ? or is it beneath the dignity of man in the 
nineteenth century ? 

What is the church of Christ ? Shall we ask the Ro- 
man Catholic, and accept his answer ? Shall we be con- 
tent with the definition of the Presbyterian, the Methodist, 
or the Baptist? Can we even accept the answer that 
would come from some of the Universalists ? Should we 
not rather go to the Master himself, for he hath spoken 
much concerning it. The church of Christ is confined 
to no one sect. It embraces men of all denominations 
and many of no denomination. The spirit of Christ is 
Christianity. Wherever that is present, there is his king- 
dom, whatever the form of faith. They who are of this 
kingdom have a right to be reckoned as a part of his 
church. Christianity is not a philosophy ; it is a life. 
He who lives that life, conscientiously trying to follow in 
the footsteps of the Master, has a right to be reckoned 
as of his household, even though at times he stumbles in 
his daily walk, and no matter what his creed. The Gos- 
pels contain no creeds. " Believe in me," was the com- 
mand of Christ, " Not believe this or that about me, but 
believe in me." This is always the faith of the Gospels. 

Men came to Christ. He attracted them. When 
they had found him they loved him, they were his. They 
did not ask why. If men now doubt him because they 
will not, do not see him, it must be because all theories, 
then or now, are but the human attempts to explain a 
spiritual fact. The fact alone is vital. There is not a 



CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 93 

possible chance of entire harmony of the Christian doc- 
trine throughout the entire Christian world ; indeed, I 
doubt if it were desirable. 

But it is possible for men, loyal to Christ, loving him 
and trusting him, no matter how different their thoughts 
concerning him and his teachings, to unite in bringing 
men to him, that they may be filled with his spirit and 
with his personality. In this, after all, is to be found the 
sum and substance of Christianity. Upon the church 
of Christ we can set no narrower limits than the Master 
himself, who said " Whosoever shall do the will of my 
Father who is in heaven, the same is my brother and 
sister and mother." Then, how small a part of the Chris- 
tian church are we, who belong to any sect, no matter 
how large its numbers. The church of Christ comprises 
all the vast multitude of the children of God who know 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and are moved by his spirit to do 
the will of the Father in heaven. 

What is the mission of the church ? It is two-fold. 
First, to make Christians ; second, to make Christians, 
Christian. Of these two, perhaps the first is the easier 
task. It is less difficult to go outside the church, and 
convince men of the holiness of Christ, than to keep one's 
self Christ-like amid the materialistic tendencies of the 
age. Not long since, a student of Socialism in one of 
the German universities, wishing to learn from his own 
experience, left his college, and went to live among the 
laboring classes in a large city. He was particularly in- 
terested to learn the attitude of the masses toward the 
church of Christ. After living and working with them 
for many months he returned to his university to give 
the result of his experience. He found everywhere, even 



94 SOME THOUGHTS OF A BUSINESS MAN 

among the most depraved, universal reverence for the 
name of Christ. Among the same classes he found also 
bitter condemnation of the church. A sad comment, 
this, from a conscientious man upon the church, that 
aims to be and should be Christ-like. All critics do not 
bring to the judgment of the church the same disinter- 
ested candor, so their criticism may be taken with some 
grain of allowance. 

Too many are unduly prejudiced. There is, as a rule, 
no more intolerant man in the world than he who pro- 
fesses to be most liberal ; he who is so blind as to see no 
good in an institution of God among men, that in spite of 
all its shortcomings, has done and is doing so much for 
humanity. Take out of this community the sum and 
substance of all Christian effort, and what would be left 
to save it from utter degradation ? Until your reformer 
can point to some constructive work, can show by his 
example some better methods, the church must go on 
as best it can, doing the work of the Lord, endeavoring 
to keep his personality ever before us ; praying and 
striving to be filled with his spirit, no matter how far 
from perfection it may fall or how many times it may fail 
even to approach it. Every man knows he is capable of 
better things ; that there is something greater in him 
than he has yet achieved. How shall we develop it ? 
Man is capable of ideal excellence. The spiritually 
minded are convinced of the existence of higher things, 
invisible to the eyes of sense or the discernment of 
reason. To see God's will and way and to proclaim it, is 
indeed indispensable to the Christian ; to do that will 
and follow in that way is quite another thing; just as 
indispensable, but far more difficult to attain. "No 



CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 95 

child of God," it has been said, "vegetates into manhood 
or passes unconsciously from manhood to sainthood." 
More find that this is attained through great tribulation. 
The man may have teachers and leaders, but learning and 
following is his own work. No longer can one sit in 
Zion, and shelter himself behind his denomination or his 
Christianity. Something more than the knowledge of 
the truth is demanded ; there must be faith and works. 
Faith and knowledge do not always go hand in hand. 
Knowledge is not to be despised ; faith is absolutely 
necessary. It is the mission of the church to keep this 
faith alive; to teach not the letter but the spirit of 
Christ's law. Its mission is to preach the gospel of the 
Lord Jesus Christ in such a way that men may be led 
through it to God and righteousness ; to bring to each 
and everyone who comes within its influence the personal 
and not the historic Christ. 

Has the church fulfilled its mission ? Has the church 
been fully equal to the task ? No. Even the so-called 
Christian nations of the world are far from being Christ- 
like to-day. This nation, of course, is not all that it should 
be. It has not yet fulfilled its mission. Still, will you 
say that it has existed to no purpose ? Can you call its 
life a failure ? Far from it. The nation is but an 
aggregation of human beings, working out the purpose of 
Almighty God, striving blindly at times, and yet moving 
upward and onward toward the goal. With Matthew 
Arnold we can say, "It is always the eternal wisdom 
which at last carries the day." Be as just to the church 
as you are to the nation. 

We do not deny that the Christian church has not 
always stood for peace. It has, at times, been a breeder 



96 SOME THOUGHTS OF A BUSINESS MAN 

of dissension ; it has preached and practised intolerance ; 
it has ever been a minister to superstition and degra- 
dation. It has often wandered far from the personality 
of Christ ; it has made much of that of which CJirist 
makes little. No man knows this better than the 
thoughtful Christian. Still, in spite of all, it is true that 
the great sweep of its influence has been for the uplift- 
ing of humanity. Its essential idea has always been that 
man is the son of God. Christ has been its ideal Master. 
To him and to its righteousness the church has led and 
is still striving to lead mankind. You must not judge a 
man by any one act of his life, for every man is again 
and again false to himself. Nor must you judge a nation 
or a community or a church by any special characteristic 
that may have belonged to it at a particular time. All 
have the right to be judged by the sum and substance of 
its life ; by the net result of good and bad, of failure and 
success. There is no power known to man that can re- 
generate human character, except religion. There is no 
religion yet revealed, more ideal than that of Jesus 
Christ. There is no organization in the world to-day, 
that in spite of all its faults, past and present, has done 
and is still doing so much for mankind as the church of 
Christ. This church has not been standing still. There 
are more Christians in the world to-day, and with more 
influence, than ever before since the birth of Christ. 
They may not, however, be relatively so well organized. 

There is more of Christ in his church to-day than ever 
before. There was a time when the church seemed to 
be a church to rule, now it is becoming a church to 
serve. 

In considering our answer to the fourth question we 



CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 97 

must remember that we started to discuss the question 
from a business standpoint. As the church passes before 
the business tribunal of the world we hear much adverse 
criticism. We are told that it must reform its methods. 
We admit that there are certain business principles and 
business methods that can be employed so as to greatly 
facilitate the work of the church. Had we time we might 
discuss the project with profit. As a business man, how- 
ever, I think there is more need of presenting the other 
side of the question. The thought I would present first is 
this : that notwithstanding the advisability of adopting 
many business methods in the church, that church which is 
conducted on purely business principles alone will fail in its 
work. If its organization stands solely for the purpose of 
keeping its expenditure inside of its income, it does not 
fulfill its mission. A man cannot discharge his full duty 
to his fellow man and to God by simply paying his pew- 
rent. 

This is the last part of the service commanded by the 
Master. The church stands for something better than a 
business career. It is true that business methods and busi- 
ness principles may be and ought to be applied to its work. 
This can be done with profit only when its members bear 
ever in mind the fact that such methods are the means 
to a higher end. In spite of the best business adminis- 
tration it will be a failure unless the pastor and the people 
are satisfied to serve God and the Master. On the other 
hand, its people may be so filled with the spirit of God 
that the work will proceed in spite of errors of judgment 
and lack of business methods. The work of the church 
in any community is not to be judged by a standard of 
dollars and cents. You cannot administer your charity 



98 SOME THOUGHTS OF A BUSINESS MAN, 

and religion on strictly business principles. You cannot 
delegate the details of your charity to a clerk as you do 
the details of your business. Your service, to be accept- 
able to God, must like that of Christ's, be one of sacrifice. 
It must have back of it and under it all a consecrated per- 
sonality. Do not expect your minister to be a business 
man. Rather pray for one so filled with the spirit of the 
Master, that he shall inspire your business man to give to 
the service of God one tithe of the money and time and 
thought and sacrifice that he gives to his business. 

You may ask what has all this to do with the question 
before us ? I trust you may see a proper relation. My 
purpose has been to show that there is something better 
than a mere business life, that every young man should 
seek to attain. A man's business should be a means to 
an end. While it is essential that he should not under- 
rate or neglect the means of his livelihood, it is quite as 
important that he should cultivate the higher and better 
side of his nature. Among the spiritual forces of the 
world the church stands foremost ; what it has been, 
what it is, what it has done and is still doing, I would 
have you consider. 

We have noted the attitude of the business world gen- 
erally toward the church, and I have shown you wherein 
I think it wrong. I have done all this simply to prepare 
you, if I may, for a brief consideration of the final ques- 
tion. Do we still need the church and Sunday school, 
and is it beneath the dignity of any man, old or young, to 
engage in their service ? I find no hesitation in answering 
these questions. There is need of the church as never 
before, and you and I have more need of its offices than 
it has need of us. 



CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 99 

The age in which we live is a materialistic one. Here 
in the West, at least, we are overrun with materialism. 
It requires great strength of religious principle to fight 
successfully against it. In doing so we are sometimes 
tempted to meet it half way. Let us not forget that 
humanitarianism is not religion. As I have before said, 
it is fed by religion. Alas for the world if the fountains 
should become dry ! This is also an age of great material 
development. Under its influence we are apt to be drawn 
away from the moral necessities of life. In the presence 
of the great power wielded by material wealth we have 
come to underrate the value of the individual. The life 
of a community is good precisely as the life of its mem- 
bers is good. The health of the nation depends more on 
its moral than on its material gain ; without sound moral- 
ity material wealth will soon decay. Perfect adjustment 
to environment is perfect life, for the community as for 
the individual. 

Upon the success of your career and mine depends in 
some measure the success of the community in which we 
live. Not your success in the accumulation of gold. A 
successful career is one in which a man does the best work 
of which he is capable ; work in which lie is interested, in 
which he finds enjoyment ; work done successfully because 
he believes that it is good. The greatest career is one 
that gives opportunity for the highest mental faculties. 
These are common facts, homely but true. 

Still, somehow there appears to be greater indifference to 
religion. Among other errors, there seems to have grown 
up among our young men an idea that it is not manly to 
be a Christian. If this idea is to prevail, alas for our young 
men, for the nation ! What do you mean by manliness ? 



iOO SOME THOUGHTS OF A BUSINESS MAN 

Phillips Brooks once said that it ought to mean the sum 
of the best qualities which characterize humanity joined 
in their true proportions, and that our manhood was con- 
tinually changing, rising, opening new possibilities, reveal- 
ing new qualities. That manliness was not an invariable 
quality, but a constantly advancing and enlarging ideal of 
character. The character of Christ does satisfy the high- 
est conception of our humanity. In these later years 
Thomas Hughes has been to our young men the great 
exponent of Christian manliness. Phillips Brooks, of 
blessed memory, did more than any other of his day to 
teach the young men of Cambridge and Boston how 
manly it is to be a Christian. Go to them and let them 
teach you if you have any doubts upon the subject. In 
the grace of Christ we find his manliness. If we had 
time it would be well to analyze his character and we 
should soon be confirmed of its manliness. Three things 
above all others are supposed to belong to manliness, — 
independence, courage, and generosity. Was he indepen- 
dent ? He carried a conviction within himself by which 
he lived with all the world against him. He did not live 
apart from the world but in it. He was of it to a far 
greater extent than any of us to-day. His independence 
commanded the respect of his bitterest enemies. Yet 
with all his independence he said truly of himself : " I 
can of mine own self do nothing.'' He acknowledged 
his dependence upon God. What a rebuke to him who 
deems it a weakness to acknowledge his dependence upon 
Christ. 

Had he courage ? See him standing amidst his enemies, 
behold him in the midst of the tempest. Think of him 
as he set his face toward Jerusalem, knowing full well 



CONCERNING THE CHURCH. IOI 

that the road led to the cross. Go with him to Geth- 
semane, and listen while he prays. 

Had he generosity ? Every moment of his time, every 
energy of mind and body, nay, even his life, he gave to 
others. Where is there manliness like unto his ? We 
know that Christ was the perfect man. If this be so, 
then to be like him is to have true manliness. To do as 
he did is to be truly manly. If he would not resent an 
injury but forgave, then forgiveness and not resentment 
is manly. Ah, we know all this, but we often forget it, 
and take in its place a manhood far beneath that of the 
Master. 

Be not deceived ; there is need in the everyday world 
of to-day of Christian manliness. There is a loud call for 
men of strong Christian character, men of conviction. A 
man with an opinion is of very little use in this world, but 
a man with a conviction can revolutionize the community 
in which he lives. We have need in the work-day world 
of men of high ideals and strong convictions. Upon them 
rests the preservation, not only of the community in which 
we live, but the very existence of the nation we love. 
There is need of such men in every profession. In every 
branch of business there is need of manly men. Where 
shall they be found ? Whence will they come ? From 
Christian homes and Christian colleges, from church and 
Sunday-school. From environments where they have 
been taught to value the higher things of life. Where 
there has been held up before them in boyhood and youth 
the example of an ideal man. Every one of them needs 
an ideal, a perfect example. It shows to each his own 
defects. It reveals to each the possibilities of his nature. 
It shows him the way by which he can attain it. The 



102 SOME THOUGHTS OF A BUSINESS MAN 

ideal should be perfect in precept and example. The 
young man should use this ideal, not as a model, but as 
an example. Not imitate him by trying to do the same 
things regardless of circumstances, but strive to live by 
the same principles. 

The perfect ideal is Christ ; and Christhood was a true 
development, not a distortion of humanity. Christ was 
the perfect man. He is the highest conception of man- 
hood that has yet come to us. His manliness was no 
weak sentimentality, but strength equal to every emer- 
gency. Gentle, loving, and kind it was, but underneath 
all this tenderness, oh, what strength there was ! A 
courage that never flinched before any obstacle. A man- 
hood that in every emergency of life was equal to the 
conflict, and never once descended to anything that was 
mean or degrading. Ashamed of such manhood, such 
amazing grace ? You may rise to the highest pinnacle 
of fame, you may become the most renowned scholar in 
the world, you may be the most successful man of busi- 
ness, and yet if you have not in some measure the grace 
of the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart your life is all in 
vain. Take it out of the world and who would care to 
live here ? The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. A grace 
that could never find a child of God so wretched or de- 
praved as to be unworthy of his care. A grace that could 
lead him to sup in loving kindness with the man who was 
to betray him. A grace that led the Christ to say, as he 
hung bleeding and dying upon the cross, " Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do." What measure 
of such grace have we ? Have we not need to pray con- 
tinuously that it may be bestowed upon us ? 

Alas for him who blushes to own such a Master ! Let 



CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 103 

us pray that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit may be 
with us and abide with us forever. God grant that we 
may never be ashamed of such manliness in business or 
in private life ! 

Chicago, Jan. 7, ipoo. 



104 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

REV. CHARLES H. PUFFER. 

" He setteth himself in a way that is not good." — Ps. xxxvi. 4. 
"And yet show I unto you a more excellent way." — 1 Cor. xii. 31. 

By invitation of your committee I am to speak upon the 
subject, Capital Punishment. It will be my special pur- 
pose to set forth certain reasons why, in my opinion, the 
death penalty should not be inflicted ; but, as preliminary 
to the presentation of those reasons, may I call attention 
to the arguments usually relied upon by those who favor 
capital punishment ? These arguments are two, namely : 
The Bible commands that magistrates exact life for life ; 
The safety of society requires the execution of murderers. 
Let us inspect these arguments in the order of their state- 
ment. 

First, The Bible commands that magistrates exact life 
for life. If we ask where, in the Bible, this command is to 
be found, we are referred to both the Old Testament and 
the New Testament. In the New Testament we are 
asked to note the following passages : 

St. Matt. xxvi. 52. — " Put up again thy sword into his 
place : for all they that take the sword shall perish with 
the sword." It is a sufficient comment upon this passage 
to say that the first part is, indeed, a command, but a 
command given to Peter alone, and that the second part 
is not a command at all. In this second part Jesus sets 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 105 

forth the "general truth," as Dr. Lucius R. Paige says, 
" that those who engage in scenes of violence and warfare 
are lible to lose their lives in the conflict." x This part is 
simply a declaration. Dr. Adam Clarke calls it a "pro- 
phetic declaration." 2 

Acts xxv. II. — " If I be an offender, or have committed 
anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die." This text, 
however, is not one of command, but one of admission. 
Paul admits his " accountability for any offense committed 
against the laws of the empire, and his readiness to submit 
to any penalty justly incurred." 3 We are told that Paul, 
in avowing his willingness to submit, if found guilty, to 
the penalty of death, assented to that penalty as right. 
Though the inference is questionable, yet assume that he 
did assent. That assent, nevertheless, is not necessarily 
to be regarded as a sufficient warrant for the infliction of 
capital punishment to-day, under circumstances so dif- 
ferent from those that prevailed in the apostle's time. 
Did not Paul himself write to the Galatians 4 that the com- 
mandment of circumcision, to the divine authority of which 
the Jews had assented for hundreds of years, had been 
superseded by faith in Christ ? 

Romans xiii. I -4. — " Let every soul be subject unto 
the higher powers. For there is no power but of God : 
the powers that be are ordained of God. Whoso- 
ever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the 
ordinance of God : and they that resist shall receive 
to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to 
good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid 
of the power ? do that which is good, and thou shalt have 

1 Comm. 3 Paige: Coram. 

2 Comm. 4 v. 6. 



106 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

praise of the same : for he is the minister of God to thee 
for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid ; 
for he beareth not the sword in vain : for he is the 
minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him 
that doeth evil." What does Paul mean by the words, 
" For there is no power but of God ? " He means, ac- 
cording to Dr. Macknight, 1 that nations derive from God 
their authority to govern. Not that bad rulers and bad 
laws are divinely sanctioned, but that the general authority 
is delegated of God. And from the word " sword " we 
may " infer," says Dr. Clarke, that a part of that general 
authority is the authority to "punish capitally." 2 In 
short, God gives to magistrates authority to inflict capital 
punishment. Dubious as this reasoning is, let us admit 
it for the occasion. The State of New York, for instance, 
if it can find no other means by which to protect its people 
from crime, has divine authority to take the lives of those 
who commit crime. But authority, surely, is not the same 
as command. Authority is a right ; command is an 
order. Authority is discretional ; command is positive. 
The passage I have read, so far as it relates to rulers, has 
reference to authority alone. 

Other texts 3 in the New Testament are sometimes 
cited by the advocates of capital punishment ; but those 
considered are usually regarded, I think, as the ones of 
chief importance. 

We turn to the Old Testament. Here, in the Mosaic 
law, we find the death penalty apparently commanded. 
"He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely 

1 Macknight on the Epistles. 

2 Comm. 

8 As Rev. xiii. io (a verse of prophetic warning), and Matt. v. 17, 18. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 107 

put to death." 1 " And he that killeth any man shall 
surely be put to death." 2 "Whoso killeth any person, 
the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of wit- 
nesses." 3 

Are those commands binding upon magistrates to-day? 
To that question I answer, no. It was the general intent 
of the Mosaic criminal code to promote the service of 
God and the people. The various laws were given as a 
means by which that intent was to be carried out. The 
intent was for all time ; the laws themselves were not 
necessarily for all time. Christ superseded Moses. The 
intent of the old laws Christ summed up and emphasized 
in the two commandments, "Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy mind ; and thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." 4 but the formal laws he did not re-enjoin. 
Those laws might be retained or abolished, as his followers 
should decide. It was the intent alone that Christ sought 
to emphasize as altogether worthy. The Christian magis- 
trate, therefore, is bound to observe that intent, the ser- 
vice of the people (and to serve the people is to serve 
God), but is not bound to obey the particular commands 
of Moses. To this answer agree, I think, publicists, 
jurists, and the people in general. 5 

Our attention, however, is more likely to be called to a 
text in Genesis. We read that, after the Flood, God said 

1 Ex. xxi. 12. 

2 Lev. xxiv. 17. 

3 Num. xxxv. 30. See also Num. xxxv. 16-18 ; Deut. xix. 11, 12. 

4 Matt. xxii. 37, 39. 

5 Though Moses commanded the death penalty for more than thirty 
offenses, no state of our Union inflicts that penalty for more than seven 
offenses. 



108 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

to Noah, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall 
his blood be shed." 1 This is the text that Dr. Cheever, 
speaking for the advocates of capital punishment, calls 
" the citadel of our argument, commanding and sweeping 
the whole subject." 2 Does this text command the magis- 
trate of to-day to take life for life ? 

First. Are these the words of God ? On the one hand, 
eminent scholars affirm, on the ground of the plenary 
inspiration of the Bible, that these are the words of God. 
On the other hand scholars like G. Woosung Wade, 3 Pro- 
fessor in Latin and Lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's 
College, Lampeter ; John P. Davis, 4 Professor of Semitic 
Philology and Old Testament History in the Theological 
Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey ; and Amos Kidder 
Fiske, 5 — regard the biblical story of the Flood, or incline 
to regard it, as a myth or a tradition. 

1 Gen. ix. 6. 

2 Cheever and Lewis on Capital Punishment, p. 236. 

8 "The first eleven chapters (of Genesis), though they contain a cer- 
tain amount of circumstantial detail, and allude to certain well-known 
localities, are obviously of a different character, their contents bearing a 
strong resemblance to the myths of other nations." " The true relation 
between the Flood stories of different nations awaits, as it seems, a com- 
plete explanation." — The Book of Genesis. (1896.) 

4 " The fact, however, now clearly apparent, that the Hebrew narra- 
tive [of the Flood] is a tradition transmitted through the fathers is of vast 
exegetical importance. . . . The narrative originated in the account of 
eye-witnesses, and has been handed down as other traditions have been. 
Its language is, of course, to be understood in the sense it bore to men 
centuries before the days of Moses." — Genesis and Semitic Tradition. 
(1894.) 

6 " The ancient Hebrews had no tradition of their own of this kind, 
but the Chaldeans of the Euphrates valley had one of the most highly 
developed of the diluvian myths, and it has been sufficiently traced to put 
beyond doubt that it furnished the material of the story of ' Noah's 
Flood.' " — The Myths of Israel. (1897.) 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 109 

The opinions of such men may well make us to doubt 
whether the connected story of God's subsequent deal- 
ings with Noah, as given in the last seven verses of the 
eighth chapter of Genesis and the first seventeen verses 
of the ninth chapter, are historically accurate ; and if 
there be any doubt upon this point, certainly the details 
given, such as the detail of spoken words, are not to be 
accepted without reservation. Properly, therefore, we 
may say that it is doubtful whether these are the words 
of God. 

Second. If we assume that God did speak these 
words, must we hold that the text lays a direct command 
upon magistrates ? Some commentators unhesitatingly 
answer, " Yes." On the other hand, Right Rev. H. Cot- 
terill, D.D., goes no farther than to say that in these 
words are " the first elements and germs of a system in 
which the whole duty of man to God and his neighbor 
should be comprehended." 1 Rev. Thomas Whitelaw 
says that in this text " the institution of the magistracy 
appears to be hinted at." 2 Dean Henry Alford says: 
" In the words, ' by man shall his blood be shed,' we can 
hardly, as Bishop Wordsworth suggests, trace the insti- 
tution of magistrates who would take cognizance of 
murder, though such an institution must, ere long, spring 
out of the obligation ; but rather is this the institution 
of the duty of the avenger of blood, who was the next of 
kin to the murdered." 3 Thus, though we find some 
commentators affirming that the text commands magis- 
trates to inflict capital punishment, we find another com- 
mentator saying that it contains " the first elements and 
germs of a system ; " another, that it " appears to hint " 

1 Pulpit Comm. 2 Ibii. 3 Comm. 



110 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

at the institution of the magistracy ; and another, that it 
primarily institutes the duty of private venegeance. In 
view of these differences of opinion, must we not hold it 
to be a matter of doubt whether the text really lays upon 
magistrates a direct command ? 

Third. Is the text a command at all ? Again we find 
scholars divided in opinion. While many look upon the 
text as a command, others, like Le Clerc and Professor 
Upham, regard it as a prediction, — the murderer will 
come to some violent end. We need not enter into the 
discussion. The fact is that the answer to this third 
question remains, even among scholars, a matter of doubt. 
Wendell Phillips said : " Call this equivocal verse in 
Genesis a warrant from the Almighty ! Why, a county 
sheriff would not arrest a sheep-thief on so ambiguous 
a warrant." 

If, then, it is doubtful whether these are the words of 
God, doubtful whether the text lays a direct command 
upon magistrates, and doubtful whether the verse con- 
tains a command at all, why should magistrates hold 
themselves bound, by the authority of this text, to inflict 
the death penalty ? 

We have now reviewed the principal texts that the 
advocates of capital punishment refer us to in both the 
New Testament and the Old Testament, and I submit 
the conclusion that the Bible does not command that 
magistrates of to-day exact life for life. 

Let us now inspect the second argument urged in 
favor of the death penalty. It is asserted that the safety 
of society requires the execution of murderers. Two 
reasons are given for this assertion. We are told, in the 
first place, that the state must execute the murderer in 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. Ill 

order that society may be freed from the peril of his 
presence. 

Is there sufficient warrant for this assertion ? We 
all agree that society must be protected. We agree, too, 
that this protection must be sought, in part, through the 
removal of the murderer. But, in order that this re- 
moval may be brought about, is there only one course 
open ? The State of New York executes. Rhode Island 
imprisons for life. 1 And yet Frederick H. Wines, in his 
special report for the census of 1890, says that, with the 
exception of Massachussetts, there are fewer homicides 
in Rhode Island, relatively to population, than in any 
other state of the North Atlantic Division. Thus it 
appears that capital punishment is not the only course 
open. Life-imprisonment is clearly an alternative. 

I know of the objections commonly raised against the 
adoption of this alternative, but those objections do not 
seem to me to be weighty. If escape from prison be 
feared, make the prison so strong, and surround the convict 
with a guard so numerous and vigilant, that escape will 
be impossible. 2 If the pardoning power be feared, restrict 

1 Rhode Island abolished the death penalty in 1852 ; Michigan, 1847 ; 
Wisconsin, 1852; Maine, 1876. "Iowa abolished it [death penalty] in 
1872, when her homicide crimes averaged one in 800,000 of her popula- 
lation ; after six years under this beneficent law her homicidal crimes 
averaged only one in 1,200,000 of her population. Then, in a general 
revision of her criminal laws, she gave to juries the right to affix the death 
penalty or imprisonment for life for murder, and since then she has had 
but two executions, but homicides have increased faster than her popula- 
tion, so that the wisdom of repealing her excellent law of 1872 is not 
apparent." — Gen. Newton Martin Curtis, H. R., Wash., 1892. 

2 For more than sixty years no life-prisoner has escaped from the State 
Prison at Charlestown, Mass. Since the prison was opened, in 1805, 
more than 500 life-convicts have been admitted, but only five have escaped 
and eluded pursuit. 



112 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

that power, or abolish it. It is possible to make imprison- 
ment for life mean what the words are intended to signify. 
The safety of society, so far as dependent upon the 
removal of the murderer, does not require the taking of 
life, for that removal can be secured equally well by the 
means of life-imprisonment. 

But the freeing of society from the murderer's presence 
is not the only consideration in the minds of those who, 
on the ground of public safety, urge the retention of the 
death penalty. There is a second consideration. In 
every state are people murderously disposed ; they have 
not committed murder, perhaps, but are likely to do so at 
any moment. The state must execute, we are told, in 
order so to frighten these people, or awe them, or affect 
them in some other way, as to deter them from the 
exercise of their murderous disposition. It is the familiar 
argument of deterrence by example. Once this argument 
was held in high and general esteem ; to-day it seems to 
be losing favor. 

We hardly need to ask as to the deterrent effect of 
capital punishment in former centuries. Col. Robert 
G. Ingersoll, in an address before the New York Bar 
Association, January 21, 1890, said : " All nations seem to 
have had supreme confidence in the deterrent power of 
threatened and inflicted punishment as the shortest road 
to reformation. Imprisonment, torture, death, constituted 
a trinity under whose protection society might feel secure. 

" In addition to these, nations have relied on confisca- 
tion and degradation, on maimings, whippings, brandings, 
and exposures to public ridicule and contempt. . . . 
Curiously enough the fact is, that, no matter how severe 
the punishments were, the crimes increased. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. I 13 

"It was found that the penalty of death made little 
difference. Thieves and highwaymen, heretics and blas- 
phemers, went on their way. It was then thought neces- 
sary to add to this penalty of death, and consequently the 
convicted were tortured in every conceivable way before 
execution. . . . And yet the number of so-called criminals 
increased." 1 

Colonel Ingersoll's statements are historically correct. 
There is no evidence of general deterrence in the history 
of those days when capital punishment was most in vogue. 

Does capital punishment deter in these days ? If there 
is decisive evidence of this, I have not been able to find 
that evidence, though I have carefully sought it. 

It is true, as we are likely to be reminded, that, if we 
compare the criminal statistics of England, which inflicts 
the death penalty, with those of Italy, which does not in- 
flict the death penalty, we find, seemingly, that England 
has fewer homicides, relatively to population, than has 
Italy. Yet what criminologist would venture to say that 
this difference is due solely, or even chiefly, to any matter 
of penalty ? The English are a deliberate people ; the 
Italians are a comparatively impulsive people. In England 
about nine per cent of the adults cannot write ; in Italy 
about fifty-three per cent. 2 It is said, moreover, that the 
carrying of concealed weapons is much more common in 

1 Crimes and Criminals. — Albany Law Journal, February, 1890. 

2 Mulhall. (1889.) 

" The increase in schools has been accompanied by a decrease in 
crime, in England, Scotland and Wales." — Dictionary of Statistics. 
Mulhall. (1891.) 

For statistical relations of education and crime in various countries, see 
also Arthur MacDonald's Abnormal Man, National Bureau of Education, 
Circular of Information, No. 4, 1893. 



114 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

Italy than in England. Thus we see how difficult it is to 
draw from a comparison of the criminal statistics of those 
countries a safe conclusion as to the deterrent effect of 
capital punishment. 

Or, again, if we leave England out of consideration, 
and compare the criminal statistics of the countries of 
continental Europe which retain the death penalty with 
the criminal statistics of the countries of continental 
Europe which have abolished the death penalty, 1 we find 
that homicide is prevalent in each. We are told, indeed, 
that homicidal crimes are increasing in some of those 
countries, as in France, which punishes capitally, and in 
Italy, which does not punish capitally. And yet, if the 
prevalence we find,, or the increase, be more marked in 
one country than in another, that difference is oftentimes 
traceable not so much to the nature of the penalty em- 
ployed as to a difference of national temperament and 
civilization. 

If we confine inquiry to a single country of the Old 
World, Italy, for instance, or Belgium, which has had 
experience both with capital punishment and without it, 
and endeavor to institute comparisons between the homi- 
cidal statistics of various periods of that country's history, 
again so many other matters, the influence of which is 
indeterminable, must be taken into consideration that a 
safe conclusion becomes an impossibility. 

Or if we limit investigation to our own country, even 
here the decisive evidence we seek seems to be lacking. 

1 In Italy no execution has taken place since 1876 ; Belgium, 1863 ; 
Finland, 1824; Portugal, 1843; Holland, i860. William Tallack, Sec. 
Howard Association, London : Some Observations 071 the Penalty of Death. 
(1893.) 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 1 15 

That evidence does not appear in statistics, State or Na- 
tional ; it is not to be found in any agreement of crimino- 
logical opinions. Indeed, those who have most thoroughly 
investigated the subject of crime seem to agree that the 
deterrence argument has been allowed too much weight. 
After all that has been said, in both hemispheres, in 
favor of the death penalty, it remains to be demon- 
strated, I think, that capital punishment has, in gene- 
ral, any deterrent effect. As the case stands, the burden 
of proof must be left with those who advocate that pen- 
alty. 1 

1 Frederick H. Wines, special census agent upon pauperism and 
crime for 1890, takes opportunity, in his report for that year, to combat 
the proposition that " harsher laws (including, of course, the law of capi- 
tal punishment) and a more rigorous administration of them " are to be 
regarded as remedies for the prevalence of crime. 

General Newton Martin Curtis has the following to say concerning the 
non-deterrent power of capital punishment. " The criminal does not fear 
death at the time of the commitment of the deed. The deterrent effect 
of the death penalty would not influence his action in the slightest. It is 
only with the approach of death that man is fearful and frightened. Any 
medical practitioner knows well that he has among his clients persons 
who are daily killing themselves by over-eating, over-drinking, or dissipa- 
tion of some kind. When he gives a warning, do they heed it ? Not at 
all. It is only when they are face to face with death that they realize 
what it is, and it is then that they become fearful, and so it is with homi- 
cides. 

. . . The records of the civil war show that, while the death penalty 
had a disastrous effect upon the troops, the number of deserters did not 
lessen, nor did it deter individuals with vicious tendencies from commit- 
ting heinous crimes." — Article in Boston Herald, February 4, 1900. 

[Note. — It may be said that capital punishment would deter, if the ap- 
prehension, conviction, and execution of murderers could be made certain. 
But is that a condition likely to be realized? 

According to Mulhall, "judicial statistics" of England and Wales 
show that, from 1878 to 1888, though 1,766 murders were committed in 
those countries, yet, in spite of the ability and the energy of the officers, 
in 1,094 instances no trace of the murderers was found. 



Il6 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

If, however, in spite of the absence of decisive evidence, 
we grant that the infliction of the death penalty does have 
some power of deterrence, the question arises, which is 
the more deterrent, the penalty of death, or the penalty of 
life-imprisonment ? In my opinion there is no differ- 
ence on this score. States may execute or they may im- 
prison, but the difference of penalty will count for nothing 
with those who plan to kill. Enrico Ferri, Professor of 
Criminal Law, and Deputy in the Italian Parliament, says : 
" Every one who commits a crime is either carried away 
by sudden passion, when he thinks of nothing, or else he 

In Massachusetts, from 1885 to 1897 inclusive, according to annual 
reports of the medical officers, 775 homicides were committed. Annual 
reports of the Prison Commissioners show that, in the same period, 679 
cases of manslaughter and murder were begun in police, municipal, and 
district courts, and before trial justices. 

Thus we see how difficult it is to apprehend all who kill ; and a like 
degree of difficulty, as we know, exists in the convicting of those appre- 
hended. 

The following statistics well illustrate the uncertainty that attends the 

carrying out of the death sentence. 

Death Sentences. Executions. 

Austria (1870-9) 806 16 

France (1870-9) 198 93 

Spain (1868-77) 291 126 

Sweden (1869-78) 32 3 

Denmark (1868-77) 94 1 

Bavaria (1870-9) 249 7 

Italy (1867-76) 392 34 

North Germany (1869-78) 484 1 

England (1860-79) 665 372 

Ireland (1860-79) • • • * 66 3 6 

Scotland (1860-79) 4° I 5 

Australia and New Zealand (1870-9) . . 453 123 

Howard Association : Summarized Information on Capital Punish- 
ment. (188 1.) 

Does certainty of apprehension, conviction, and execution seem a con- 
dition likely to be realized ? ] 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. W] 

acts coolly and with premeditation, and then he is deter- 
mined in his action, not by a dubious comparison between 
the death penalty and imprisonment for life, but simply by 
a hope of impunity." x Judge Kinney, of Michigan, says : 
" In general I think that he who has murder in his heart 
will seldom stay the fatal blow through consideration of 
the penalty." 2 Is not that reasonable? Let a child in- 
herit more of evil than of good. As he grows to man 
hood let his surroundings be uncleanness and immorality 
Let him come to man's estate a stranger to every virtue 
depraved in his desires, corrupt in all his conduct. Then 
let some murderous passion possess him. To such a man 
born to an inheritance of evil, reared in the midst of evil 
accustomed from childhood to the doing of evil, filled now 
with an evil passion, and ignorant of everything good 
what does it matter whether the statute read, " Execution,' 
or " Life-Imprisonment " ? Is it not reasonable to believe 
that the difference of penalty he will utterly disregard ? 
Or suppose a very different case. Let a child inherit 
more of good than of evil. Let his surroundings be clean- 
ness and morality. Let him come to man's estate, pure 
of heart, upright in all his conduct. Let him stand in the 
community, respected and self-respecting. Then let some 
great passion, that of extreme jealousy, for instance, take 
possession of him. Even such a man may be dominated 
by evil. The forces of evil are resident within him. 
Hitherto they have lurked in the deep and hidden 
chambers of his soul, biding their time. Now comes a 
moment when the way is clear. They gather themselves 
and assault the man's better nature. He struggles against 

1 Criminal Sociology. (1896.) 

2 Torajiro Mod : Capital Punishment. (1890.) 



Il8 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

them at first, soon temporizes, and then surrenders, — 
sad record of defeat in many a life ! The master has 
become the slave. The good within him has been over- 
powered. He sees no good about him. Murder, horri- 
ble, monstrous, rises before him. In the day it commands 
his thoughts, by night it orders his dreams. It rules his 
life. It becomes his intimate. It multiplies motives. It 
suggests' plans. It devises means. It discovers oppor- 
tunities. Step by step it leads him on. The world grows 
narrow to him. The fatal moment approaches. His 
muscles draw themselves with an intenser strain. His 
blood is fire. Strange lights flash in his brain. Think 
you that this man is likely to be turned from his course 
by any threatenings of the law ? What matters it to him 
whether the statute read, " Execution," or " Life-Imprison- 
ment " ? "He who has murder in his heart will seldom 
stay the fatal blow through consideration of the penalty." 
Difference between the penalties counts for nothing. In- 
crease or decrease of homicide is dependent upon the 
inner state rather than upon external law. Massachusetts 
and Rhode Island stand side by side, one with the death 
penalty, and the other without it. Character of popula- 
tion and conditions of life are about the same in each. 
And these are the two States of the North Atlantic 
Division, as I have said, which have the fewest homicides 
in proportion to the number of people. 1 Shall we say, 
then, that the safety of society, so far as that safety is 

1 " In Rhode Island, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where capital punish- 
ment was abolished from twenty-five to fifty years ago, human life has 
been as secure as in any other State of the Union, and much more so than 
in some of them where the death penalty is in force ; and during the forty 
years since imprisonment for life was substituted for hanging in case of 
murder in Michigan, but one case of murder by lynching under mob law 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 119 

dependent upon the deterrent power of penalty, requires 
that the murderer be put to death ? 

Here we may conclude our inspection of the second 
argument urged in favor of capital punishment. I fully 
agree with those who advance this argument, that the 
safety of the public demands both the removal of the mur- 
derer and, so far as possible, the deterrence of the murder- 
ously disposed ; but I do not believe that the taking 
of life is essential to the attainment of those ends. That 
attainment, as I have sought to show, can be brought 
about equally well by the means of life-imprisonment. 

We have now considered the arguments usually relied 
upon in support of the death penalty. If those argu- 
ments are indeed so inconclusive, may I not ask you to 
consider with me some positive reasons why no State of 
our Union should inflict that penalty ? 

I. The first reason is this : The infliction of the 
death penalty by any State of the American Union has 
an element of injustice to the murderer. By murderer I 
mean one who, while in possession of his reason, has 
taken human life with malice aforethought. 

The State, it is true, does not intend to be unjust, even 
to such an one. In the appendix to Mr. Wines's report 
for 1890, we read: "It is commonly said that the end 
sought in the punishment, so called, of criminals, is the 
protection of society. But injustice to prisoners, in the 
name of the law, would be an assault upon the bases of 
all righteous governments. It must therefore be assumed 
that the criminal law is designed to be just." That, 

has come to our knowledge." — Crime: Its A r ature, Causes, Treatment 
and Prevention. (1889.) By Sanford M. Green, late Judge of the 
Supreme and Circuit Courts of Michigan. 



120 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

certainly, is the design. But in practice that design is 
not always carried out. The State, in executing the 
murderer, is liable to deal with him, I contend, unjustly. 

The injustice lies in this, that capital punishment denies 
to him the benefit of a reasonable doubt as to his entire 
moral responsibility. 1 

We all agree, I am sure, that if there be a reasonable 
doubt as to his moral responsibility, then, in justice,' the 
murderer should be allowed the benefit of that doubt ; 
but some will inquire, perhaps, " What ground can there 
be for the doubt ? " In my opinion there are three 
grounds. 

First. It may be that the crime of murder is due, in 
part, to disease. 

A theory that crime is sometimes due to disease has 
gained wide acceptance among medical men and crimi- 
nologists. Lombroso, 2 of Italy, is usually regarded as the 
father of this theory. Ferri, himself a leading advocate 
of the theory, 3 says that Lombroso, by the publication of 
The Criminal, in 1876, "established the new science of 
criminal anthropology." Since 1876 specialists of all 
lands have carefully studied the theory, and many have 
accepted it. Its advocates are found in all the leading 
countries of the Old World, and in the United States. 
It is the center of what is sometimes called the " Italian 
School." Dr. Henry Maudsley, Fellow of the Royal 
College of Physicians, and Professor of Medical Jurispru- 

1 It might be added that the alleged murderer is liable to injustice 
through defectiveness of defense, and the fallibility of jurors in determin- 
ing the value of the evidence presented. 

2 Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Turin. 

3 See Criminal Sociology. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 121 

dence in University College, London, says : " There is a 
border-land between crime and insanity, near one boun- 
dary of which we meet with something of madness, but 
more of sin ; and near the other boundary of which some- 
thing of sin, but more of madness. 

" Crime is not, then, in all cases, a simple affair of yield- 
ing to an evil impulse or a vicious passion, which might 
be checked were ordinary control exercised ; it is clearly 
sometimes the result of an actual neurosis, which has 
close relations of nature and descent to other neuroses; 
and this neurosis is the physical result of physiological 
laws of production and evolution." 1 

Dr. A. Jacobi, ex-president of the Medical Society of 
the State of New York, says : " Insanity is the field in 
which crime may grow. Alleged crime, which landed 
the perpetrator in the state prison, proclaims itself quite 
often as insanity, after a brief prison life ; crime that was 
punished by the death penalty has been proven to have 
been insanity in its physical manifestation, on the autopsy 
table. Such facts go far to intimate that crime is apt to 
be insanity plus its dangers to society." 2 

1 Responsibility in Mental Disease. (1874.) 

Of interest is the following, from William D. Morrison of H. M. 
Prison, Wandsworth. Until the subject of insanity shall have been 
more fully investigated, " we shall never exactly know the intimacy of 
the connection between nervous disorders and crime." He gives the fol- 
lowing statistics : " The number of persons convicted of willful murder (in 
England), not including manslaughter or non-capital homicides, from 1879 
to 1888, amounted to 441. Out of this total 143, or 32 per cent, were 
found insane. Of the 299 condemned to death, no less than 145, or 
nearly one-half, had their sentences commuted, many of them on the 
ground of mental infirmity. The whole of these figures decisively prove 
that between 40 and 50 per cent of the convictions for willful murder 
were either insane or mentally infirm." — Crime and its Causes. (1891.) 

2 Cong. Nat. Pris. Asso., Austin, Tex., 1897. 



122 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

Z. R. Brockway, superintendent of the Elmira Reform- 
atory, holds the disease theory, and says of it : " To all 
who are actually and successfully engaged in the work of 
recovering criminals to reasonable conduct and habitual, 
orderly adjustment of themselves to their proper environ- 
ments, there appears nowadays the dawn of a new light, 
such as shines upon the theory of the treatment of the 
insane." 1 

B. F. Bridges, warden of the Massachusetts State 
Prison, says : " In my opinion crime is sometimes due to 
disease, even when the nature of the disease may defy 
detection." 2 

This theory, I understand, is held by Michael Cassidy, 
warden of the Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, 
and by Arthur MacDonald, specialist upon abnormal and 
weakling classes for the National Bureau of Education. 

General Newton Martin Curtis, of New York, in an 
address before the House of Representatives, Washing- 
ton, June 9, 1892, said: "Medical men, those who have 
considered criminal anthropology and mental diseases, are 
almost unanimously for abolition, to the end that death 
shall not be inflicted upon the irresponsible and diseased ; 
that the just line of moral responsibility may be drawn 
between disease and deviltry." General Curtis cites, in 
evidence, the Homeopathic Medical Society of the State 
of New York as unanimously voting, in 1891, to urge 
upon the legislature of New York the abolition of capital 
punishment, and the Eclectic Medical Society of the State 
of New York as voting almost unanimously to the same 
end. In short, the disease theory is held in both hemi- 

1 Cong. Nat. Pris. Asso., Indianapolis, 1898. 

2 Statement to the writer. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 1 23 

spheres by men of high authority, some of them special- 
ists of world-wide repute. Those who accept this theory 
agree, in general, (1) that crime is sometimes due to dis- 
ease, (2) that detection of disease in individual cases is 
oftentimes impossible, (3) that the presence of disease 
indicates limited responsibility. 

Now this theory, of course, is not well enough estab- 
lished to warrant the conclusion that every murderer is 
so diseased as to be irresponsible, — if completely estab- 
lished it might not warrant that conclusion, — but I main- 
tain that it is sufficiently authorized to raise in all our 
minds a reasonable doubt as to the entire responsibility 
of some murderers. And inasmuch as the detection of 
disease is sometimes impossible, so that we cannot know, 
in those cases in which experts are unable to detect dis- 
ease, whether the men convicted of murder really were 
well or sick, responsible or irresponsible, at the time they 
committed their crime, must we not go a step farther, 
and doubt the entire responsibility of every murderer 
whose irresponsibility has not been made evident ? To 
illustrate : Ten men are on trial for murder. Two of the 
ten are found to be insane. Those two, therefore, are 
held to be irresponsible ; they are exempt from penalty. 
What now of the remaining eight ? Careful examination 
fails to detect disease in any of this number. They are 
declared guilty. We know, however, that medical exam- 
iners, though the most expert, are not infallible. We 
know, also, that many of the leading criminologists of 
the world hold a theory that crime is sometimes due to 
disease, even in cases in which the presence of disease 
may defy detection. And the high authority of those 
criminologists leads us to question whether some of these 



124 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

eight men may not, after all, be more or less diseased, and 
therefore more or less lacking in moral responsibility. 
But the question we ask we cannot answer. It is impos- 
sible to determine whether number one is healthy or dis- 
eased, number two, number three, or any other number. 
It is impossible to determine whether one of the eight is 
entirely responsible. And if we cannot be certain upon 
that point, what is left us but to hold in doubt the entire 
responsibility of each ? And is not that doubt a reason- 
able one ? 

Second. A further consideration is, that the crime of 
murder may be due in part to heredity. 

Does it not seem to you that, in some cases, heredity 
alone is almost sufficient to determine character ? At 
Nero's birth, says Farrar, the father " brutally remarked 
that from people like himself and Agrippina could only be 
born some monster destined for the public ruin." Read 
the records of families which, for generations, have sent 
into the world men and women of upright life ; then read 
the records of other families 1 which have given to the 
world for generations little but crime. Is it not true 
that heredity is an influence in every life, a mighty power 
in some lives ? 2 

And yet no man is able to look into the life of another 

i The Jukes. By R. L. Dugdale. 

2 Morrison, of whom mention has been made, says, in his Crime and 
its Causes : " According to these figures (Herr Sichart's) more than one- 
fourth of the German prison population have received a defective organi- 
zation from their ancestry, which manifests itself in a life of crime. 

" In France and Italy the same state of things prevails. Dr. Corre is 
of opinion that a very large proportion of persons convicted of bad con- 
duct in the French military service are distinctly degenerate either in 
body or mind. Dr. Vergilio says that in Italy 32 per cent of the crim- 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 1 25 

and know either the nature of the inheritance received, 
or the degree of influence exerted by that inheritance. 
How, then, can we be certain that the murderer is en- 
tirely responsible ? Knowing that heredity may have 
given him an evil inheritance, and that that evil inher- 
itance may have had some part in the bringing about of 
his crime, have we not good reason to doubt his entire 
responsibility ? 

Third. It may be also that the crime of murder is due, 
in part, to the influence of environment. 

Every life is more or less affected by this influence. 
Are you an upright man ? Something of that upright- 
ness is due to the home life of your childhood, and to the 
influence of those you have met outside of your home. 
Is this man a bad man ? Something of his badness may 
be due to evil surroundings. When Nero was a boy the 
license of the Roman court must have imparted itself, in 
some degree, to his character. When Catherine de 
Medici was yet a girl the unfaithfulness of her husband 
must have had some part in the hardening of her heart. 
Who doubts that conviviality in the early surroundings of 
Richard Sheridan had something to do with the gross 
intemperance of his later years ? What character but is 
more or less the product of environment ? Colonel Inger- 
soll said, in the address from which I have quoted, " As 
long as children are raised in the tenement and gutter, 
the prisons will be full." Chaplain William H. Locke, 
D.D., of Ohio, says of the prison cell : " It tells its secret 

inal population have inherited criminal tendencies from their parents. In 
England there is no direct means of testing the amount of degeneracy 
among the criminal classes, but, in all likelihood, it is quite as great as 
elsewhere." 



126 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

of unfortunate parentage ; of lack of culture ; of press of 
circumstance ; of social neglect. And it declares that 
these causes are more potent than heredity in leading into 
crime and in molding the criminal. The secret which 
the cell tells is the secret of the pitiless hand of environ- 
ment." 1 In many a life, we well may believe, environ- 
ment is a determining factor. Certain it is, I repeat, 
that environment is influential in every life ; in some 
lives for good principally, and in others for evil principally ; 
in some, aiding responsibility, and in others opposing, 
even preventing or destroying, responsibility. 

And yet we cannot know, in any particular case, either 
the nature or the degree of that influence. It is impos- 
sible to determine whether the murderer is altogether 
guilty or altogether unfortunate, or partly guilty and 
partly unfortunate. This we do know, that his crime 
may have been due in part to the influence of his environ- 
ment. Again, therefore, have we not good reason to 
doubt his entire responsibility? 

What, then, is the conclusion ? Here is the doubt. It 
is a doubt justified by the conclusions of expert crimi- 
nologists, and justified by the fact, that, in every life, char- 
acter is more or less molded by heredity and by the 
influence of environment. It is a doubt that should enter 
into consideration in all our dealings with the murderer. 
Ought not the murderer to be allowed the full benefit of 
this doubt ? If we deny him this benefit, are we not 
liable thereby to deal with him unjustly? And how 
great is the offense ! By this injustice we violate the 
very design of our criminal law. More than that, we 
deal unjustly with one who, in the judgment of that 

1 Cong. Nat. Pris. Asso., Austin, Tex., 1897. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 1 27 

higher tribunal which alone is able to determine the 
power of circumstance, may be no more responsible than 
is the leaf that drives in the wind, — one who may be less 
guilty, indeed, than is the state itself, that permits to so 
many of its children an environment pervert ive of reason 
and destructive of the moral sense. 

To this injustice are you and I willing to consent ? 
Are the people of New York, or Massachusetts, or any 
other State that retains the death penalty, willing to con- 
sent ? Not one of the States but would refuse to execute 
a man proved to be innocent. Not one but would refuse 
to execute a man shown to be insane. Why not, in that 
same spirit of justice, — that spirit which the criminal 
law is designed to promote ; yes, and the Christian gos- 
pel also, — why not allow to the murderer the benefit of 
this reasonable doubt, and refuse to take his life ? 

II. But there is a yet larger and more important con- 
sideration than that of mere justice to the criminal. It 
is the duty of the State to promote the highest well-being 
of all its people. 

In one aspect this duty is a divine requirement. We 
read in Christ's gospel, " Love your enemies, bless them 
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray 
for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." 1 
We read also that the second great commandment is, 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 2 It is a 
divine requirement that man love, serve, "do good to," 
his neighbor, even though that neighbor be an enemy. 
This same obligation of service God lays upon the State. 

In another aspect this duty of the State is one enjoined 
by that law, written in the very nature of man, which 
binds us to the pursuit of the supreme good. 

1 Matt. v. 44. 2 Matt. xxii. 39. 



128 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

It is, then, a duty enjoined both by the spirit of divine 
commands and by the moral law, that the State promote, 
in every possible way, the highest well-being of all its 
people. And my second objection to capital punishment 
is, that the State that inflicts the death penalty fails in 
the discharge of this duty. 

The obligation to promote the general well-being has, 
must we not assume, some relation to the criminal class 
itself. Is it not the duty of the State to serve even the 
murderer, — to seek his reformation, and to encourage 
him to reinstate himself in the social order ? 

But if capital punishment be inflicted how is it possible 
for this service to be rendered ? It is true that the State 
may allow to the murderer, after his conviction, a few 
months in which to produce new evidence, present excep- 
tions, and appeal for clemency. It may provide him with 
physician, cook, and chaplain. But in all this there is 
little of service. The doctor may prescribe, the cook 
may prepare food for the body, and the chaplain may 
point out the way to heaven; but these physical and 
spiritual stimulants administered with a view to the near 
ordeal are not enough. You would not be satisfied if the 
man were your son. The well-being of the murderer de- 
mands more than the State, in the brief period interven- 
ing between his conviction and his execution, is able to 
give. If death be the penalty, the duty of the State to 
the murderer must remain undischarged. 

Furthermore, if we grant that the State is in duty 
bound to seek the reformation of the murderer, must we 
not concede that an even greater obligation rests upon 
the State to promote the well-being of its law-abiding 
citizens, the people in general ? 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 1 29 

Yet, in the discharge of this larger duty, the State 
that inflicts capital punishment can meet with but partial 
success. Society is, indeed, through the death of the 
murderer, freed from the peril of his presence, but more 
than this is required. The general well-being demands 
that the state give to the people a beneficent example. 
If, however, the state take the life of the murderer, must 
not the example given be one actually demoralizing ? By 
acting in the spirit of " an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
a tooth," or by seeming to act in that spirit, the state 
encourages among the people a retaliatory disposition ; by 
denying to the murderer the benefit of a reasonable 
doubt as to his moral responsibility, it lessens the people's 
esteem for law, and lends approval to injustice ; by taking 
life, it lowers regard for the sanctity of life. Must not 
such an example tend to degrade the people's character ? 

Z. R. Brockway says : " The strongest argument 
against capital punishment is not either the uncertainty 
of convictions, the cruelty of it, or the sacredness of 
human life ; but rather the injury of it to the public 
tone, that immaterial, intangible something we call public 
sentiment, out of which there is a permanent growth of 
conduct, good, bad, or indifferent." 1 

Henry Romilly says : " It seems to be a plain, practi- 
cal contradiction for a ruler who professes it as his ob- 
ject to stimulate by every means in his power the feeling 
that human life is sacred, and to preserve unimpaired the 
sentiment of horror for the act of taking away human 
life, to follow up the perpetration of a first deliberate 
homicide by the perpetration of a second deliberate 
homicide." 2 

1 Cap. Pun. Mogi. 2 The Punishment of Death. (1886.) 



130 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

Thomas B. Reed says : " Capital punishment is in- 
jurious to society because the example is bad. You 
propose by your laws to teach the sanctity of human life, 
and yet you say to the people of this State that under cer- 
tain circumstances their lives are not sacred. In other 
words, you propose to educate the public mind so that 
men will not kill by declaring that you will kill. In one 
sentence of your statute you demand that the criminal 
shall reverence the sanctity of human life, and in the next 
you show your contempt for it. You demand of him in 
the hot blood of hate a forbearance which in the cool 
blood of deliberation you declare you will not grant ; 
and so the awful lesson of killing is read from your own 
statute-book, and you give it its utmost sanction." 1 

Yes, if the state inflicts the penalty of death, then by 
example the state violates that consistency which the 
people have a right to expect, and encourages the very 
evils deplored, — passionateness, vindictiveness, disrespect 
for the sanctity of law, and disregard for the sacredness 
of human life. The well-being of the people demands 
that the state give a beneficent example, and the answer 
to that demand is an example that must be held perni- 
cious. Do we err, then, in maintaining that the state 
that punishes capitally fails to fulfill its obligation to 
society ? 

We have now found that the infliction of the death 
penalty involves, upon the part of the state, a double fail- 
ure in the discharge of duty, — failure to serve the 
murderer, and, except in the matter of protection from 
the murderer, failure to benefit the general body of the 

1 Speech in Maine Legislature, February 19, 1869; in Appendix to 
Address by Gen. Curtis. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 131 

people. Why, then, we may ask a second time, should 
the law of death be retained ? 

III. But the upholder of the death penalty is likely to 
remind us that no one to-day contends that capital punish- 
ment is a faultless method of dealing with crime. He 
may say: "I grant your objections, that the infliction of 
the death penalty is liable to work an injustice to the 
murderer, and that it promotes neither the well-being of 
the criminal nor that of society in general ; but you have 
no right to ask for an abandonment of this method unless 
you have a better one to propose." I concede the force 
of this demand ; and, in conclusion, I submit that there is 
a better way, the way adopted by Kansas, 1 Michigan, 
Wisconsin, Maine, and Rhode Island. Let the state im- 
prison the murderer for life. 

You may, if you choose, decree that he be kept in close 
confinement. In this case you inflict upon him a punish- 
ment that, to most of us, would be worse than death it- 
self. Sky, hill, tree, meadow, street, every place or 
scene that was pleasant, every companionship that was 
attractive, even labor in the prison work-shop, and recrea- 
tion in the prison-yard, — from all this he is shut away. 
Only the walls of a prison cell, with a little light coming 
in, and, at regular intervals, a keeper bringing food. 
There, outside the walls, men walk the earth, free to seek 
whatever profit or pleasure the world may give ; there 
the sunlight falls, and children laugh ; here, silence, soli- 
tude. And the life of one day is the life of each follow- 
ing day. What an awful monotony ! If it were to 
continue but for a month, or a year, hope might brighten 

1 Kansas does not inflict the death penalty, though retaining the 
law. 



132 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

even the prison cell. But to sit here in the silence 
year after year, and look into the future, and say to one's 
self: "This must continue till my hair shall whiten and 
my strength shall fail," — this is horrible. Even the 
most vindictive man could hardly wish a worse fate for 
a mortal enemy. And if the imprisonment be not soli- 
tary, such as I have spoken of, still the severity is little 
less. The prisoner is alone except when at work, or -at 
the Sunday service, and even when at work he is not per- 
mitted to converse with those about him. 

In its mildest form life-imprisonment is a terrible 
punishment. In some cases it may be unjustly severe. 
It does, however, permit a certain scope to justice. It 
gives him continued opportunity to prove his innocence, 
if he be innocent, 1 and to profit by any correction of error 
in his sentence. 2 If disease appear, it allows him oppor- 
tunity for the proper medical treatment. All this 
certainly is in the line of justice. 

Furthermore, this method of dealing with the criminal 
enables the state to render to him that reformatory ser- 
vice of which he stands in need. He is brought under 
strict discipline, and discipline itself is reformatory in 
many cases. He is made to recognize the power of law. 
In the State prison at Charlestown, Massachusetts, each 
man admitted for life (unless sentenced to solitary con- 
finement), if illiterate upon entering, is taught, in the 
prison school, to read and write. Each life-convict is re- 

1 See Phillips on Circumstantial Evidence ; also Capital Punishment, 
pp. 30, 31, T. Mogi. 

2 In 1883-84 one life-convict in Massachusetts was pardoned on 
ground of error in sentence; one, doubt as to degree of guilt; one, case 
not properly presented. Other pardons have been granted for similar 
reasons. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 133 

quired to keep his cell in a neat condition. Each is given 
the privilege of books, though not allowed full liberty as to 
choice of literature. If sentence and conduct war- 
rant, each is given manual employment. Each is per- 
mitted to have portraits upon table and wall (in one cell 
I have seen suspended a portrait of Phillips Brooks). 
Each is given the services of a prison chaplain. Thus, 
though the loneliness is little interrupted, though the 
severity never lifts, the State aims to improve the char- 
acter of her life-prisoners. The convict is given that 
carefully considered, steady, and continuous service which 
his reformation most demands. And I doubt not that in 
prison some men, through the simple means I have indi- 
cated, have grown to a better manhood than would have 
become theirs in the world at large. Such reformatory 
work as is being done in the Massachusetts prison is 
carried on among life-prisoners in other States. It is 
possible in every State. The method of life-imprisonment 
not only enables the State to render justice to the crimi- 
nal, but also gives to the State opportunity to attempt his 
reformation. 

Nor is this all that may be said in favor of life-impris- 
onment as a substitute for capital punishment. Impor- 
tant as it is to serve the criminal, yet more important is it 
to promote the well-being of society. And this greater 
sendee life-imprisonment enables the state to render. 

The state that ceases to kill ceases to set before the 
people a pernicious example ; and that, of itself, is a 
sendee much to be commended. But still more, the 
state that substitutes life-imprisonment for capital punish- 
ment gives to the people an example emphatically benefi- 
cent. By refusing to be vindictive, the state discounte- 



134 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

nances vindictiveness upon the part of the people. By 
its own regard for the sanctity of human life, it promotes 
among the people a like regard. By allowing to the 
murderer the benefit of every reasonable doubt as to his 
moral responsibility, it encourages the spirit of justice. 
By providing the fullest possible opportunity for the re- 
formation of the criminal, it fosters humaneness. Must 
not the influence of such an example tend in truth to 
elevate public thought and feeling, reaching even to those 
depths where moral sentiments seem to be held in least 
esteem ? To kill the murderer is to degrade the people ; 
to imprison and seek to reform him is to set before 
society an example wholesome and beneficent, adapted to 
ennoble the people's character. 

And now, friends, I will not tax your patience longer. 
This in closing : Two ways are open. That is the way 
of capital punishment ; this is the way of life-imprison- 
ment. In that way some degree of protection to society ; 
in this way an equal degree of protection to society. 
But there, constant liability of injustice to the criminal, 
and little opportunity for reformatory effort ; here less of 
liability to do injustice, and more of opportunity to effect 
a reformation. There, also, an example demoralizing to 
the public character ; here an example that inculcates the 
sacredness of life, and the obligation of beneficent service 
to the unfortunate, the degraded, and the criminal. Is 
not this the better way ? 



UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 

GEORGE L. PERIN. 

" And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
gospel to every creature." — Mark xvi. 15. 

The keynote of my theme will be found in these 
phrases, "into all the world," and "to every creature." 
Any vain and unnecessary boasting as to mere denomi- 
national name is exceedingly distasteful to me. But if we 
are to take these words of Jesus to ourselves, and are to 
entertain for even a moment the dream of a world-wide 
message, we must put aside all modesty as to names, and 
stand face to face with the question, Is that system of 
thought commonly known here in America as Universal- 
ism, fit for the wide world ? Some one will immediately 
answer, " Why, of course ; who would Universalism be 
for if not for the world ? ' ' Some form of partialism 
might do for Cape Ann, or Cape Cod, or Nantucket, or 
any other corner of the earth. I say might do, though 
in fact I believe partialism is not very popular in any of 
these places. But clearly, if the word has any meaning, 
Universalism is for the world. It would be as logical to 
try to find a place where the atmosphere is not needed, 
or where vegetation would grow without water. 

There has been, I believe, a prevalent notion among a 
certain few that Universalism is an excellent thing within 
a narrow radius of a few miles from where they happen 

i35 



136 UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 

to live. They would be glad to have it made strong and 
permanent in their region, but they seem to feel that its 
conquests and its service might well be substantially 
limited to that fortunate neighborhood. Whether they 
have fallen into this opinion because they fear that Uni- 
versalism might not be found vigorous enough to stand 
the wear and tear of an aggressive pioneer movement in 
the wilds of the West, or whether they fancy that, the 
people of the South and West are already near enough 
to the Kingdom of Heaven, or whether they have settled 
down to the conviction that they are wholly given over 
to the devil and are therefore past redemption, I have 
never heard. If it is the former and they have gotten 
the notion that Universalism is a weakling, I would like 
them to read the life of John Murray or Hosea Ballou, 
hear the story of its early conquests, and they will quickly 
see that it has from the first been able to wear heavy 
armor and to fight with the broadsword. If they are 
not satisfied, let them call upon our Japan missionaries 
and learn how it has borne itself in the fever-infested 
regions of the East, and how it has enlisted the interest 
of some of the brightest people of Asia. Ah, no, my 
fearful one, there is courage, there is fortitude here. 
This is no mere, puny, effeminate stripling of a religion. 
You need not be afraid to have your darling go West or 
South, or even across the Pacific. 

But if we take the other alternative, still the conclu- 
sion is false, for a good religion ought to be good for men 
in death and life ; it ought to be good for men in sorrow 
and care ; it ought to be good for them in temptation and 
sin. Nov/, all these conditions exist in the West and 
East and South and North, even in Tokyo, Hongkong, 



UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 1 37 

and Calcutta. Men die everywhere. There is nowhere 
on earth that the wail of sorrow is not heard. There are 
temptations everywhere. Men are sinful everywhere. 
But if we were even to concede that there were some 
places apparently given over to the devil, then there is 
the place above all places where real Universalism ought 
to get in its work, and snatch the victims from the hands 
of the devil, and put them in the hands of God, where 
they belong. 

Whatever men may think of our interpretations, who- 
ever will go back and take a fresh look at the Gospels 
and the Epistles will see that Jesus and the greatest 
apostle conceived for the new kingdom nothing less than 
universal sway. Palestine was but the cradle, the Roman 
Empire was but a single province, all Europe was, after 
its final conquest, to be but a little corner of the kingdom. 
Theirs was the audacious conception of the earth sub- 
dued, a world sitting at the feet of the Master. Or, if I 
may put it in the language of one of our manuals of 
Faith and Duty, " Jesus aimed at nothing less than world- 
wide dominion, perpetual through the ages. He must 
forestall the fickleness of human nature, must by one and 
the same course conciliate or coerce all varieties of civili- 
zation ; must commend His message to all sorts and con- 
ditions of men, to the most opposite and fiercely contend- 
ing interests, to rich and poor, the powerful and the 
humble, the learned and the illiterate ; must anticipate 
and adapt his message to all discoveries, all evolutions ; 
must, in short, penetrate to the very center of human 
need, and nestle there, immovable and regnant through 
all time." 

Full of this idea of universal conquest, St. Paul could 



138 UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 

pause not a moment. From the hour of his conver- 
sion, " The world for Christ " seems to have been his 
watchword. He could brook no delay. He must push 
immediately forward. The message of the new King 
must be carried beyond Palestine, beyond Ephesus, be- 
yond the y£gean Sea, beyond Athens, into Rome and into 
Europe. And who can study the subsequent history of 
missions without perceiving that this was no idle proph- 
ecy of the Master, and no vain ambition of the great 
apostle? Like a great tidal wave, the forces of the king- 
dom have swept across the continents, like a mighty ship 
they have leaped from wave to wave across the seas, 
like an invincible army they have penetrated wilderness, 
climbed mountains, and conquered nations, until the 
world for Christ, in outward form at least, has been well- 
nigh transformed from a prophecy into a victory. 

There can be little doubt, therefore, that Christianity, 
both in the ambition of its founder and in the hands of 
its best disciples, aims at universal conquest. Now, 
Universalism is an interpretation of Christianity. By 
its very name it puts itself in line with this large aim of 
the Master. It is alleged "Universalism." Is it real 
Universalism ? Let us see what it is in theory. 

In the first place, it finds in the Gospels a Father for 
everybody. In all the world it finds not a single orphan. 
The sorrowing are everywhere. The thoughtless, the 
depraved, debauched, ignorant, the wretched, the sinful, 
are everywhere. But nowhere an orphan. Whether in 
the jungles of Africa, the plains of Syria, the crowded 
cities of China, or amid the civilizations of Europe and 
America, the great Infinite Father Spirit broods over the 
spirits of men. Men may forget the Father, but He does 



UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 139 

not forget them. Into whatever desert, across whatever 
rugged mountains, into whatever valley of sin, whatever 
slough of despond, whatever depth of despair, he follows 
them, wraps them about as with a garment, and whispers 
into their timid ears the sweet assurance, " Lo, I am with 
you alway, even unto the end of the world." 

There came to my office one day an old lady with 
white hair, starved features, and tottering steps, leaning 
heavily upon a cane. There was a scared, timid look in 
her careworn face as she sank heavily into a chair, and 
told me her pathetic story. It was very simple. An 
utterly debauched and worthless son, who for thirty years 
had brought nothing but sorrow to the heart of his 
mother, had been arrested for an assault from which his 
victim had died. He was lying in jail awaiting trial. 
The bruised heart of the old mother yearned for her boy, 
for he was still a boy to her ; and she begged me to loan 
her ten cents with which to ride to and from the jail. 
In a moment of indignation at what seemed to me out- 
raged affection, I asked, "Why do you not leave him 
alone? He does not care for you." Her eyes filled 
afresh with tears, her head sunk lower, as she answered 
with infinite tenderness, " No, I know he does not care 
for me, but I care for him, and he cannot have a mother 
long." Then, if I could, I would have given her a trip 
across the continent to see her boy. 

Ah, what would the world do if it were not for mothers 
like this ? With such a vision before us, how gladly we 
join in the familiar lines : — 

" Blessings on the hand of woman 1 

Angels guard her strength and grace ; 
In the cottage, palace, hovel, — 
Oh ! no matter where the place. 



140 UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 

All true trophies of the ages 

Are from mother love impearled ; 
For the hand that rocks the cradle 

Is the hand that rocks the world." 

What indeed would the world do if it were not for 
mothers like this ? But there is a God like this. There 
is one who will be a Father when all the mothers are 
dead. There is a Father for all the desolate and all 'the 
outcast. Away with the rumor that God has ever dis- 
owned His child! out upon the story that any wayward 
child may wander out of His sight ! forbid the thought 
that anywhere the Father's love is ever alienated! The 
Universalist believes in the same God now that was 
typified by the sweet story of old in which the Father 
went out to meet the recreant but returning son. In one 
regard, at least, therefore, Universalism is a religion for 
the world. It proclaims an ever-present, universal 
Father. 

In the second place, it believes in a cure for every form 
of sin, and for all the sin of the world. It does not be- 
lieve in a defeated God. It is a victorious gospel. One 
cannot help feeling sorry for the God of some people. He 
is a kind-hearted, benevolent God, who means well, but 
his world is too big. It has gotten away from him and is 
going to ruin at break-neck speed. When I contemplate 
such a God I can only think of a picture I saw once, rep- 
resenting a long reach of railroad track, a wild engine 
speeding away in the distance, while the frightened 
engineer, bare-headed and with hair standing on end, was 
leaning far out of the cab, calling wildly to the amazed 
footmen by the way to stop the engine. So we some- 
times have a picture of the infinite God, having set in 



UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 141 

motion a mighty system of moral machinery, involving the 
hopes and the lives of untold multitudes of souls, and per- 
mitting it to pass so entirely from his control that he can 
only stand dismayed and see it work on to certain ruin. 
Surely here, if ever, one is justified in using the phrase, 
" Poor God ! " He is good, he is kind, he had a benevo- 
lent purpose, he meant well, he conceived grandly, he 
built in a large way, but his world is too big ! He cannot 
control it. " Poor God ! " 

How much finer the sentiment of Chauncy Hare Town- 
send when he said, " Give evil but an end and all is clear. 
Make it eternal and all things are obscured, and all that 
we have thought, felt, wept, endured, — worthless. We 
feel that e'en if our own tear were wiped away forever, no 
true cheer could to our yearning bosoms be secured, while 
we felt that sin or sorrow clung uncured to any being we 
on earth held dear. Oh, much doth life, the sweet solu- 
tion want of all made blest in far futurity. Heaven needs 
it too. Our bosoms yearn and pant, rather indeed our 
God to justify than our own selves. Oh, why then drop 
the key that turns discordant worlds to harmony ? " 

Universalism does not drop the key. It believes in a 
cure for every form of sin and for all the sin of the world. 
The race is fighting a hard battle, but it is not a losing 
battle. Every man is invited to toil, often with bitterness 
and anguish. He must toil on through tribulation, 
through temporary disappointment and defeat, but really 
to final victory. Jesus himself leads the way. The 
strength of the Almighty arm is pledged to final success ! 
Man is not working alone. God is with him. This is 
God's world. And he is not a poor, puny God, with 
ambition outrunning His power. Here is wealth of 



142 UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 

divine influence. Here is almighty purpose and energy. 
Here is final conquest. 

It remained for Universalism to make this large inter- 
pretation of Christianity ; to verify by its faith the clear 
teachings of Jesus and Paul that the new kingdom was to 
gain dominion over all the earth. It remained for us to 
proclaim a victorious gospel. It is we who distinctly de- 
clare that the gospel is good for men on every side of the 
globe ; that it was meant for all, that all must receive it, 
and that all must be redeemed by it ! 

In theory, therefore, Universalism is for the world. 
In name and in the general spirit of our faith, no church 
has ever made larger pretensions than we. Dean Hodges 
is reported to have said a while ago that the name " Uni- 
versalist " is one of the few really great and fine names 
for a church to bear. And it is ; but do we seem to have 
been greatly inspired to action by the greatness of our 
name ? Have we been loyal to our pretensions ? Have 
we been seized by any dream of expansion ? 

I was interested in hearing Rev. Mr. Tenney's account 
of how the people received the proposition of the architect 
of their new church at Grove Hall to place a gilded 
rooster on the vane of the church. He said there was 
very vigorous rebellion on the part of the people against 
the proposition. And I believe they finally substituted a 
globe instead of the rooster. As symbolizing Peter's de- 
nial and repentance, the rooster has been used in every 
age. In spite of this, however, I should agree with the 
Grove Hall people. And yet there is a class of churches 
for whom the rooster would be a capital emblem. Not 
because they remind one of a barn, but because they do 
little but crow. They crow better than they work. But 



UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 143 

for a real Universalist church, which has caught some 
vision of its own fine interpretation of God and man, what 
better symbol could there be of its noble faith and far- 
reaching moral purpose than the globe. For once a Uni- 
versalist church has been true to its instincts in rejecting 
the rooster and substituting the globe. 

Now, after all these preliminary years of preparation 
and skirmishing and even of hard fighting for standing 
room among Christians, I am wondering if the hour has 
not come for us to gird up our loins for a general ad- 
vance movement ! I wonder if we are not about ready 
to do something more to make our Universalism univer- 
sal ! I wonder if we are not about ready to throw out 
our picket-line a little farther each year, and take up ad- 
vanced positions in our organized enterprises ! Are we 
not about ready for expansion ? 

And yet, here as everywhere, there will be objectors. 
One man declares there is little use for us to enter upon 
any really aggressive organized effort. We are too small. 
We cannot hope to compete successfully with the older 
and larger organizations. Yes, this is the old story, — 
the desire to excuse ourselves from the little we can do 
because it is not more. Jesus heard of one man of this 
sort who buried his gift in the ground. He would gladly 
have invested his talent if there had been more of it. 
But only one poor little talent ! What were the use of 
investing that ? So the poor little man, with his poor 
little courage, and his poor little brains, puts his poor 
talent in the ground until the Master comes back and 
takes it away from him, and leaves him poorer and littler 
than he was before. 

So does not any man of courage and brains. So did 



144 UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 

not William Lloyd Garrison, who could find no other 
man to plead for liberty. So did not Murray, when no man 
waited for his sweet message on these inhospitable shores. 
So did not Jesus, when, standing all alone, he prophecied 
the universal dominion of His kingdom. So did not St. 
Paul, when, on foot and alone, often stoned, scourged, 
shipwrecked, imprisoned, he pressed on through multitudi- 
nous difficulties, never whining because he was the only 
Christian missionary among the million heathen, but de- 
claring, " Woe is me if I preach not this gospel." 

Only one little sunbeam shining through one little win- 
dow into one little room to make glad one little heart. 
But it does not refuse to "shine, and does not even com- 
plain about competing with a million other beams in the 
business of shining. Only one little flower among ten 
thousand ! What is the use of being beautiful or fra- 
grant ? Only one company in a regiment ! There are 
nine others. What is the use of competing with these ? 

Away with this pusillanimous plea ! Out upon a 
church that is not willing to be a working company in a 
regiment of Christian workers ! Just as every pound 
of steam in the boiler adds to the pressure without 
grumbling, and without asking questions, so every dis- 
ciple in a church, and every church in the great church 
Universal, should take its place among the hosts of right- 
eous influences with the one purpose of serving the Lord. 

There is a church in Boston whose founder sets up as 
the standard of his work the purpose to reach " all the 
man and all men by all means." He is not a Universal- 
ist ; but in his ambitions he is pretty near Universalist 
ground, and I would be willing to take that declaration 
of purpose — " all the man and all men by all means " — 



UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 145 

as a watchword of a new and aggressive movement of the 
Universalist church. 

"All the man!" Of course, all the man for Christ. 
Not merely his head, nor his hands, nor his feet, but all 
the man. We are very fond of saying that Universalism 
is a peculiarly intellectual religion. And it is, because it 
is ready to meet a man on the plane of his reason and 
satisfy his thought. But it would be equally true to say 
that it is a peculiarly emotional religion. It has all the 
elements of emotion. It makes its appeal to the affec- 
tions, the hopes, and all the higher emotions of man. A 
Universal religion is a religion for every part of a man. 
A man is not all body, nor all brains, nor all heart. He 
is composite. He is a many-sided being. If our religion 
has any right to the claim of Universalism, it ought to 
lay hold of a man's thought, at once refining it, elevating 
it, and consecrating it to the service of God and man. 
It ought to gain dominion over the body, making it clean 
and healthy and strong in the service of the man who 
dwells in it. It ought to play upon the emotions as a 
skillful musician plays upon the strings of a harp. All 
the man for Christ ; heart, hands, head, body, soul — all 
for Christ. 

Yes, all the man and all men ! I sometimes hear it 
said that the Unitarian church is essentially an upper-class 
church. If so, it is unfortunate. The same people say 
that the Methodist church is essentially a lower-class 
church. If so, it is unfortunate. But we do not escape, 
for they say of us that we are essentially a middle-class 
church. If it be true, that also is unfortunate. The 
world has little use for a merely class church. "All the 
world for Christ" is our motto. It is very hard to 



146 UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 

decide which is more in need of the Christian missionary, 
the aristocracy or the hoi polloi ; which is more in need 
of salvation, the rich man or the poor man ; which is 
farther from the kingdom of heaven, the learned or the 
ignorant man. Nothing more democratic has ever ap- 
peared than the Christian religion as shown in the life 
and words of the Master himself. 

But I am afraid that too many of us, when we have 
thought of the gospel under the light of universal con- 
quest, have ranged too much in foreign fields. All men 
for Christ has meant a few choice spirits out of all na- 
tions. Our idea has been a few Chinamen, a few Japan- 
ese, a few Brahmans, a few Jews, etc., — samples for 
heaven, as it were, out of all the races ! Our hearts are 
not breaking for the Chinaman in Chinatown in our 
American cities, nor for the poor, despairing heathen of 
any of our slums, whose moral lights have one by one 
gone out and left them in midnight darkness. Come, 
dear friends, let us stick to our ideal, " All the man and 
all men for Christ." Nothing short of this will do as a 
daily working object. 

Let us now take the final step. "All the man and all 
men by all means /" There is the working ideal. By 
all means. Some people would rather have a part of the 
world go to hell than to have anybody saved in any other 
than their way. Some of us have yet to learn that 
motives intended to influence the actions of men must 
have infinite variety to meet the infinite complexity and 
variety in human nature. All men cannot be saved by 
your way nor my way. It requires all the ways of all 
whose hearts are right to save all. The great trouble 
with us in this business of Christian activity, is that we 



UNIVERSALIS!! FOR THE WORLD. 147 

are forever hampered by some sort of provincialism or 
traditionalism. Even as the Jews were too provincial to 
understand the Master, so are we to-day. We are dimly 
conscious now that the gospel was meant for everybody, 
but are as helpless as babies in the interpretation of it to 
the understanding of those who are not affected by our 
traditional motives. One trouble with the average, well- 
to-do church is that it has more dignity than it knows how 
to handle. If I had to write the epitaphs of the dead or 
dormant churches of this country they would run some- 
thing like this : " Here lie the mortal remains of a church, 
cut down in a needy world, full of opportunity. It died 
with its back toward the enemy, its face toward home. 
Immediate cause of death, failure of the heart. Second- 
ary cause, too much dignity." Forever afraid of doing 
an undignified thing in the name of the Lord ! To my 
thought there has been in all history no such perfect ex- 
ample of dignity as that of the Master. And yet he 
seems to have been entirely unconscious of any necessity 
for being dignified. But to the conventional Jew he 
was the greatest possible offender against the ceremonial 
dignity of the law. What a breach of dignity was it to 
have stopped in the middle of a sermon to heal a sick 
man let down through the roof ! The dignity of some of 
us is offended to find a poor man sitting in our pew when 
we come into church late. What a breach of dignity was 
it to have permitted the sinful woman in the house of 
the Pharisee to bathe his feet in tears, and wipe them 
with her hair ! So far as I know, the Pharisee never 
recovered from the shock. What a contrast was this in- 
defatigable, unconventional, miracle-working, shock-pro- 
ducing friend of sinners to our average respectable, 



148 UNIVERSALISM FOR THE WORLD. 

clean-shaven, well-dressed, self-satisfied, self-important 
Christian, with whom Christian dignity occupies so large 
a place that he would be thrown into a fit of nervous 
prostration by the sight of a polluted woman or a drunken 
man in the house of God ! Dignity ! Yes, Jesus was 
the most dignified man on earth, but he was never con- 
scious of it, and never under any necessity of thinking- 
it. So is every manly man dignified when he works. 
Look at any honest, earnest carpenter, brick-mason, or 
blacksmith at his legitimate work, and he is dignified 
without trying to be. So is any church under the con- 
trol of an absorbing purpose to serve the Lord Jesus 
Christ always dignified without thought of dignity. 

Yes, all men by all means. By the old ways and by 
new ways. With an eye single to the salvation of men 
and the service of God, go forth more afraid of inaction 
than of succeeding in the wrong way. This is the spirit 
of Jesus, and this is the spirit that I would like to see 
take possession of the whole Universalist church, — a 
spirit of action, of aggression, of noble endeavor. Not 
a brainless movement, full of zeal without knowledge, 
but a movement loyal to the pretensions of the Univer- 
salist name, — a movement baptized with the Christian 
ambition for universal conquest, and that shall be forever 
dissatisfied until its hosts are found farther and farther 
out upon the frontier, in the very van of those of every 
name who are fighting for Christian victory. 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF UNIVERSAL- 
ISM TO THE WORLD'S FAITH. 

JAMES M. PULLMAN, DD. 

It is with much reluctance that I claim your attention 
at this late hour. But as you will not let me off, I will 
follow the example that has been set me, lay aside my 
written paper, and try to give you its purport briefly. 

I select five things as representing the contribution of 
Universalism to the faith of the world, namely : Faith in 
man ; faith in the essential beneficence of evil ; faith in 
the spiritual and organic unity of the race ; faith in the 
interminableness of man's progress ; and faith in a noble 
and brilliant future for all humanity. 

I begin by throwing away certain assumptions. It is 
not claimed that these large beliefs are the invention or 
discovery of the church which is represented here to-day. 
Universalism adopts and aims to universalize them. 
Neither is it claimed that essential Universalism is new. 
Its modern forms are a development of the old faith in 
an adequate God, who is equal to the solution of His 
problem without an eternal catastrophe. 

Universalism was defeated in the fifth, and again in the 
sixteenth century ; so that the modern Universalist move- 
ment is the third attempt in Christian history to intro- 
duce these broad and generous faiths into the spiritual 
culture and life of the world. 

149 



ISO THE CONTRIBUTION OF UNIVERSALISM . 

I. Faith in Man. It is astonishing how barren the 
Christian creeds are of any expression of faith in man 
— the highest organism in the visible creation. We be- 
lieve that man is created in the image of God, and is 
able to know and to do his will. Man is not a worm, a 
slave, a wreck, but a developing being who began low 
down, and is on his way up. He is not a ruin, but a mine, 
full of yet undeveloped riches. His career is not one of 
restoration simply, but of growth. He is a being of sub- 
lime capacities — God's fellow-worker, co-operator and 
agent, through whom the divine purposes are wrought 
out on earth. God made the world ; but he did not fin- 
ish it — he set man at that task. God furnishes the 
forces, the arena, and the constant inspiration ; man does 
the work, and in doing it he develops the one thing that 
God does not create — character. Man's conquest of 
himself is exhibited in the development of his language 
and literature, his laws and government, his morality and 
humaneness, his organization of society. As Martineau 
says : " The human commonwealth, with its hierarchy of 
mutual service, its army of tamed passions, its invisible 
guard of ideal restraints, its traditions of heroism, its 
hopes of greatness, its sympathy with the moral life of 
the world, is the highest product of the providence of God, 
and the most impressive witness to the possibilities of 
man." And exactly in parity with man's conquest of 
himself has been his conquest of nature. He has 
changed the surface of the earth, and built his homes, 
temples, and highways everywhere ; tamed its fruits and 
animals to his purposes, molded its matter to his desires, 
and trained its forces to his will — making great nature 
both his trusted master and his willing servant. On this 



TO THE WORLD'S FAITH. 15 1 

subject I need say no more, since there stands to-day, al- 
most within sound of my voice, an exhibition, gathered 
from all quarters of the earth, of man's conquest over 
nature — a great and shining witness to the splendor of 
his material achievement. Greater than all that he has 
done, is the modern man himself, with his growing eager- 
ness to serve humanity, his worship of moral ideals, his 
visions of the perfected man, his contempt of death, his 
assurance of a larger career in worlds to come. The 
new creed of the world, whether written or not — the 
source of the stir and power of modern life — is faith in 
man. 

II. Faith in the Beneficence of Evil. Evil is the 
challenger of man's strength. It says : " Rise up and 
overcome me." Pain is stimulus ; arousing man's ut- 
most energy and contrivance to modify or vanquish it. 
Pain is the spur that overcomes apathy and selfishness. 
The pain-martyrs are benefactors. The spectacle of 
their sufferings inspires man to some of his noblest 
deeds. The stolid indifference of nature to justice and 
love awakens man to insubordination and rebellion against 
the cosmic order. For man belongs not to the cosmic 
but to the ethical order, and is here not to submit to the 
cruelties of nature, but to resist and overcome them. 
Resistance to moral evil, too, has unlocked and developed 
the noblest energies. Man's sturdy and augmenting 
antagonism to all forms of evil is proof of an essential 
divineness in his nature. 

The retributive forces are beneficent in their discrim- 
inating ruthlessness. They demonstrate the moral order. 
By the return of my deeds upon my head I am made 
aware that there is somebody in the universe who cares 



152 THE CONTRIBUTION OF UNIVERSALISM 

which way I go. The moral nature within me corre- 
sponds to the ethical intent of the universe ; and all 
the hells are God's tribute of respect to the powers and 
freedom of his creatures. Pain is the prolonged birth- 
pang of higher powers, and the conflict with evil is but 
the fair price of life and perfected character. 

Note, too, the persistence of moral force. Far back 
in the ages of the fire-mists, there began a struggle ' for 
physical order against chaos and darkness. This old 
earth is scarred all over with the marks of that conflict. 
Finally the forces of order triumphed ; and on the stable 
arena thus secured, man appeared, and began the struggle 
for moral order against natural and moral evil. An im- 
mense ethical energy was embodied in a race which did 
not know how to give up the struggle. Baffled, disap- 
pointed, exiled, trampled on, ground to powder, they 
never gave up ; but, holding fast to their inborn faith, 
they rebuilt again and again their shattered empire. 
Finally the iron hand of Rome crushed out their national 
life, and then the persistent moral energy of this race in 
carnated itself in one man — Jesus Christ. Him they 
killed as dead as they could, and buried as securely as 
they could ; but he sprang from his grave, seized the 
moral scepter of the world, and has wielded it over sixty 
generations of earth's strongest peoples. Moral force is 
persistent and invincible, and evil brings it out. Evil is 
the challenger and developer of the strongest energies of 
our race, and in this its function is beneficent. 

III. The Organic and Spiritual Unity of the Race. 
Seven-tenths of the race are not to be dismissed from 
our sympathies as children of the devil. The devil is not 
a creator. All men are of one blood, and it is God's 



TO THE WORLD'S FAITH. 1 53 

blood that is in them, not the devil's. The religions of 
the world are all based on the same fundamental verities 
and essential needs, but with vast accretions due to race 
differences and local conditions. There is the " rod and 
candy " religion for child-minded men, and the lofty- 
motived religion for more developed peoples — alphabet 
religions and philosophy religions — but one great mean- 
ing underruns them all — they are all God's religions, and 
they mean conformity to the moral order. The select 
and selfish heaven of a class must be given up. " Heaven's 
gate is shut to him who comes alone." We are an eternal 
and indissoluble brotherhood. We cannot resign nor 
emigrate. The strong must learn to help the weak, the 
wise the foolish, and the good the bad, until all are strong, 
and wise, and good. A new perception of the structural 
and essential unity of the race is the core of the new 
world movement against the preventable evils of life. 

IV. The Interminableness of Man's Progress. All 
human progress — material, intellectual, social — depends 
upon the degree of moralization. The struggle for ad- 
vancement is essentially a moral struggle, and it cannot 
be limited by the physical event of death. The whole 
moral universe is the arena of this great conflict. 
" Things in heaven, and things upon the earth, and 
things under the earth " are implicated in it. The mag- 
nificent drama of the conflict of light with darkness 
cannot be crowded upon this little stage of earth. Man's 
moral career is not confined to this narrow span of years 
— it is only begun here. Man's sublime capacities are 
not exhausted, they are only whetted in this short life. 
Neither does God deploy all his redemptive forces upon 
this limited field. Theologians have wrangled over, what 



154 THE CONTRIBUTION OF UNIVERSALISM 

they call " eschatology," — the doctrine of the last things, 
— the last judgment, the last heaven, the last hell, — as 
though all the moral business of the universe was to be 
wound up and its accounts closed in a few brief years or 
centuries. But the atmosphere in which the vision of 
Dante and Milton crystallized is wholly changed ; the new 
knowledge has shown us the illimitableness of the universe 
and of life — there are no " last things " in sight ! ' No 
dogma about the final outcome of things in an illimitable 
order can longer command interest or belief. Man's 
progress is interminable. There are no known finalities 
in the career of a moral being forever living and forever 
free. 

V. The Eternal Hope. The soul of progress has 
heretofore been "a confident belief in a brilliant and 
happy future of humanity." Some degree of this great 
faith has always given energy to man's efforts. Unfor- 
mulated, obscured, often unconsciously held, always 
alloyed with the trivial or tremendous creeds of the 
system-makers, — this eternal hope has, nevertheless, 
borne humanity onward and upward, — the soul of its 
power and progress. Modern Universalism is the effort 
to disengage this soul of the world from its creedal ob- 
scuration, trace it to its source in the bosom of God, and 
apply it to human need and aspiration. Religion is the 
voice of God in the soul of man, bidding him forever 
aspire. 

We know what a profound gulf separates us from 
those hidden shores upon which the full fruition of this 
eternal hope must be realized. But every bright hope 
is the beginning of its own fulfillment ; and every great 
faith creates the object of its desire. Get the world to 



TO THE WORLD'S FAITH. 155 

believe in a noble future, and it will have a noble future, 
— it will begin at once to build it. Make the Universal- 
ist hope strong enough, and it will fulfill itself, there 
will be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. The creeds of selfishness and despair 
have had their day and performed their function. The 
world now needs the larger and more generous faiths, 
which create the new heart and the new spirit. A gulf 
of deepest mystery surrounds this island-earth on which 
we dwell. We must build within ourselves the bridge 
of faith, which alone can span the wide abyss. Let me 
illustrate what I mean by the figure of the cantilever 
bridge. A cantilever is a bracket. A cantilever bridge 
is a double or balanced bracket. When the gulf to be 
spanned has a reachable bottom, we can build our piers 
upon it, lay the beams of our bridge over them, and so 
cross the chasm. Where the gulf is too deep, or the 
waters too swift for this, we can erect solid towers on 
both shores, swing our suspension bridge between them, 
and so cross. But the gulf which surrounds us here is 
unfathomable ; it has no reachable bottom, and no visible 
further shore. Our only resource is the cantilever. 
We must build our solid pier of fact on our own side of 
the gulf, start our truss-work from the top of that, and 
then we can build out over the abyss just as far as we 
build the balancing worth and faith inland in our own 
souls. By all the laws of spirit, the unseen bridge-builder 
on the further shore will build toward us as far and as 
fast as we build toward him. The stronger and more 
out-reaching our hope, the sooner will the junction be 
formed between man's desires and his Maker's purposes. 
The only Universalism I care anything about, is that 



156 THE CONTRIBUTION OF UNIVERSALISM. 

which builds the bridge of eternal hope over the gulf of 
sin and darkness, and makes God accessible to the lost 
soul and straying feet of the weakest and worst of men. 
All creeds are true in proportion to their ethical incite- 
ment, but all are false by defect and poverty of hope. 
The widest expectations of man are too narrow for the 
beneficent purposes of God. Life is going to yield us 
more than we can ask or think ; but it will yield in pro- 
portion as we learn to think and ask great things. 
Universalism aims to contribute to the world's faith the 
disposition to ask and expect more life, the undying 
energy of an eternal hope which, not content with rescue, 
reprieve, security alone, seeks and expects nothing less 
than transformation into the perfect sonship of God. 

Hall of Washington, Art Institute, 
Sept. ij. 



LETTERS. 

Mrs. MARY T. GODDARD. 

To no one is so much credit due for the missionary 
work I have been instrumental in accomplishing for the 
Universalist church as to Mrs. Mary T. Goddard, who 
so recently has been called to scenes of still more an- 
gelic service. Her works for lifting up the fallen, suc- 
coring the helpless, and her great benefactions to the 
Universalist church, so conspicuous in promoting its 
missionary and educational enterprises, are well known 
to all well-informed Universalist s. I shall never cease 
to be thankful to her, not only for financial aid, but for 
her frequent words of encouragement and inspiration. As 
a source of spiritual strength, her letters have been to 
me, for more than fifteen years, next to the New Tes- 
tament. I bless her memory. For the benefit of the 
young people of our beloved church, which she loved 
so ardently and served so faithfully through her long 
life, and for the purpose of kindling our young minis- 
ters with greater zeal and consecration, I have thought 
it wise to publish in this book of " Good Tidings " ex- 
tracts from at least a few of the many inspiring, hopeful 
letters written by her own hand. From the building of 
my first church, at Plymouth, N.H., up to within a few 
days of her death, these letters came to strengthen my 
hands and increase my faith. And she has contributed 
to assist me in building about twenty-five churches. 

i57 



158 LETTERS. 

For lack of space I will be compelled to omit many 
of her beautiful words. And the dates I will also omit, 
except that of the first letter from which I quote : — 

Newton, Mass., May 6, 1885. 
Rev. Q. H. Shinn : 

Dear Sir, — Enclosed I send check for fifty dollars, and hope you are 
seeing gratifying results from your many self-imposed labors. I sin- 
cerely pray your health and strength may be long preserved to you, that 
you may continue in the line in which you have undertaken to walk, 
until parish after parish shall take form and position under the banner 
of the Universalist denomination. I do not care how many rays. may 
stream out in all directions, but I am ambitious, for one, that the body 
of light and heat should be as large and concentrated as possible. 
Yours very truly, 

Mrs. M. T. Goddard. 

... "In all these matters, your judgment, since you know the whole 
field, I feel to be best. I cannot conveniently send you the five hundred 
dollars until the first week in September; but you shall have it by that 
time, if you so wish. It delights me to hear," etc. 

"Mrs. M. T. Goddard." 

... "I should be very sorry to have your movements impeded by 
the want of means ; and you can send for those if you find it necessary. 
Rejoicing in your successes, with kind remembrance to Mrs. Shinn and 
the boys, " Your friend and would-be co-worker, 

"Mrs. M. T. Goddard." 

... "I am truly rejoiced that you are meeting so much encourage- 
ment in all your work, and carrying comfort to so many waiting hearts 
waiting to realize the gospel of Christ as Universalists understand it. 
I am always anxious lest you be tempted to do too much, and weaken 
your strength, which to you and to our cause is more at this time than 
money. You and your family have my sincere and earnest prayers, that 
our strong, loving, wise Heavenly Father will sustain and bless you all. 
" Yours with esteem and respect, 

"Mrs. M. T. Goddard." 

... "I have just received payment of a debt which I had been 
hopeless of for some time. As it has come as quite an extra, I have 



LETTERS. 159 

devoted it all to purposes of charity and the good of our increasing 
church. So you have your share ; and I am trying to make it go round 
for furtherance of many objects I have at heart outside of those which 
claim my constant attention. 

" I am still a prisoner in my home, as the weather is very unfavorable 
for invalids. But my head keeps tolerably clear ; and with the compe- 
tent help of my assistant, I can carry on quite a share of work. This 
makes my life very pleasant, and I have only a great feeling of grati- 
tude for all the blessings vouchsafed to me. Praying that all blessings 
you can enjoy may be showered upon you and yours through the 
coming year, " Very sincerely yours. 

" May we all live and move in our increasing faith in the eternal love 
of the Heavenly Father, in the power of his spirit, in the helpfulness 
of our Saviour and Elder Brother, Jesus Christ." 

" How you do task your strength. I know you are thinking always, 
'I must work while it is day.' May the Heavenly Father protect and 
guide you in all things." 

"And now the time for your Weirs gathering is approaching, and 
your heart and your hands are full. I trust you will have as great suc- 
cess as ever. I am still imprisoned by my infirmities, and no mountain 
trip and no meeting with the faithful beneath ' The Smile of the Great 
Spirit ' will be possible for me ; but I have thought I could have some 
part in the matter by strengthening your hands a little, and helping you 
to engage workers and lighten your labors, which must be arduous. So 
I enclose 'filthy lucre' to the amount of one hundred dollars, to be 
used in any manner you may see fit. Praying the blessing of the Heavenly 
Father may be your shield," etc. 

"I must write to you to-day to say how much I have enjoyed your 
letters 1 this winter, especially your last one of Feb. 3d. I enter into all 
your rejoicing in the success of your constant work. Your parting with 
those enthusiastic friends at Spokane moved me greatly. How I trust 
the light you have shed into so many hearts may burn on steadily, 
illuminating all life's pathway, and showing the true road into the 
Kingdom of Heaven, which we can enter even here, can feel something 
of its joy, can see something of the blessed life which awaits us when 
we shall know even as we are known. Then, working for our faith in 
God, in Christ, in human brotherhood, in any and in all ways we can, 
will not only be duty, but delight. Every year, every month, every day 
increases my gratitude, that I think of the great, the wonderful God as 

1 Letters in Gospel Banner. 



160 LETTERS. 

my Father, whose love is ever round me, even now in the midst of in- 
firmities, and will never change through the endless ages 1 

" I will send the two hundred dollars you spoke of to Mr. Cheney * in 
a day or two, and only wish I could contribute much more. Should I 
live another year, I shall strive to allow more in your direction. How 
earnestly I pray your health and strength may be continued long, and 
that wisdom from above be continually given you to make you more 
confident and clear-sighted in the heavenly work you are trying to do. 

" I rejoice also in your words, that Mrs. Shinn and your boys are in 
comfortable health this winter. It seems a special blessing that you may 
work with more freedom from anxiety. I think of your wife with great 
esteem and affection. She is certainly doing her part in your missionary 
work, in giving you up so resignedly, when your strong arm and stronger 
spirit would be such a joy to her. I would like she should know there 
is one who thinks she can appreciate it all. I sometimes think it would 
be happiness if Mr. Goddard had gone only on a mission, and I should 
see him occasionally, at least, with my bodily eyes. But I must wait to 
go to him now; and the waiting cannot be long. 'Ye believe in God, 
believe also in Me. Because I live, ye shall live also.' Blessed words 1 
The God of peace and power be with you in all your wanderings. 
" With great esteem, 

" Your Friend." 

" You will succeed in your work. I feel you will ; and I hope and 
pray your earnestness and enthusiasm will open many a purse now closed, 
and many a hand with money in it, to help you onward. I am thinking 
how beautiful it must be now at Weirs. ' The Smile of the Great Spirit 2 ' 
is before your eyes, and I trust is filling your whole soul with radiance." 

" You are truly indefatigable in your labors in the South. As I read 
of them in the Banner letters, I wonder how your strength holds out to 
do so much. Please remember that, however stout and brave your soul 
may be, it is quite dependent on the body whether the work shall be 
done or not. So, pray, be careful ; for although you are arousing others 
to follow in your footsteps, you are the one particularly needed at 
present." 

"I have been reading Rev. Mr. Borden's account of the dedication 
of the church at Chickamauga, Ga., Dec. ioth, and much enjoyed his 
enthusiasm over the occasion, and especially over all you did to glorify 
the scene by your presence and words, and your staunch and loyal 
fidelity to the Universalist gospel you find set forth in the blessed 

1 The late Matthew Cheney, noble man, was treasurer of the Weirs summer meeting. 

2 Indian name for Winnepesaukee Lake. 



LETTERS. l6l 

New Testament of God's love for his children, and his provision for 
their redemption from sin and sorrow, and their being brought, in the 
great future, to enjoy holiness and happiness in his presence, through 
Christ, his Son, their teacher, leader, and friend. Dearer every day do 
the words Universalist and Universalism become to me, because I know 
of no others broad enough to express the largeness of our faith." 

" I am interested in all you are doing, and wish I might be of some 
assistance to you more than I am at present. I remember you said 
what I could pay in your department, you would like to have me send 
to the General Convention. I have pledged the convention six hundred 
dollars, from September '96 to '97, for general uses of the convention* 
apart from the missionary money, which will all be sent in due time. 

. . . This is a long letter for me to write ; but I am glad to write 
you to thank you sincerely for all you are doing to comfort poor human 
souls, and bring them out of darkness into the marvelous light of our 
blessed gospel. The Father's blessing rest on you and yours." 

" I am intensely interested in this movement of the Young People's 
Christian Union, — our young people, who will strengthen and spread far 
and wide our blessed gospel of Universalism, Christ's gospel, as we 
believe, which, it seems to me, when thoroughly taken into the soul, 
can mitigate and comfort amid all the trials of life, and enhance every 
innocent pleasure and every joy, until a taste of heaven becomes the 
portion of earthly dwellers. And may all who have found this peace 
be walling to spend and be spent for the good and salvation of those 
still sitting in the darkness of sin, or the darkness of false views of the 
Heavenly Father's care of his children." 

" I am very anxious over this convention meeting at Chicago, for I 
feel sorely all the difficulties in the way of its being satisfactory to 
those who love the name and doctrine of Universalism. I often ask 
myself, can I do any more to spread the glorious gospel, to induce 
those who acknowledge its truths verbally to worship God more fully 
every day in spirit and in truth ? ... With regard to capital punish- 
ment, I am entirely with you in your reasoning, and for many years have 
argued that Universalists were bound by their belief to remonstrate 
against this un-Christian way of dealing with human beings under any 
circumstances. No soul which God has created can be wholly lost to 
the right influence which may be brought to bear upon it ; and to brighten 
up the divine spark within should be the aim of all discipline and 
punishment." 

" I have been, and still am, very busy. What with the fall fairs and 
Christmas preparations, my head has been exercised pretty much all it 



1 62 LETTERS. 

will stand; while in my little charity circle in Boston, where I have min- 
istered to families for over forty years, sickness and death have had to be 
comforted and provided for. I am very thankful to my Heavenly Father 
that he has permitted me to minister to them these long years. . . . 
You can imagine my joy when I found the great convention at Chicago 
bringing Universalists and Universalism boldly to the front." 

" When I read your letters, I enter into all your enthusiasm for the 
organization of those Universalist people of the great South ; and pray 
you may be blessed with help from the great Giver of all aid and strength, 
to continue and hold secure all the ground you have gained. Your 
knowledge of the great question of race in our Southern country must 
improve vastly by your constant journeyings here and there. I cannot 
hide from myself a great fear for the future, the difference between the 
two divisions are so radical. But God reigns ; and the people he has 
permitted to congregate in our land will not be forsaken by him. One 
thing troubles me very much — that the ignorance, the inertia, the low 
moral development and degradation, of the colored race, are so often 
charged wholly to being kept in slavery for some two hundred years. 
This is not truth. When my husband and myself were in the midst of 
Tulus, Basutos, Tingos, and other tribes of the black race, in our visits 
to the missionaries there in Africa, not one but would say that the very 
lowest position of slaves in our country was far, far above that they 
were in when dwelling in their own land, and that what they developed 
in the homes of intelligent masters was the only way their power of 
being raised in the rank of civilization could be known." 

" I assure you I always recognize your hand-writing with pleasure. I 
read about you in the Southern Universalist papers, and your articles in 
the Leader, and still wonder, as I have done, how you can accomplish so 
much. The power of God is with you, I am sure, and strength from him 
is sustaining you, I love to believe. I thank him for you and your work, 
and pray earnestly he will continue you in health to carry it on still 
farther and farther. ... My first and last word shall be, stand up firm 
for our Universalist gospel of Peace and Good-will from the Heavenly 
Father towards all his children." 

" I pray God to lead me and show me the work he wishes me to do. 
Still I feel much my various limitations in my power to do. The poor 
body craves a great deal of attention in order to accomplish a little. 
But O, what glory lies before me 1 What I have learned here of God 
and of Christ fills me with joy. What will the farther education in the 
higher school above do for me ? The Universalist gospel ! preach it 
with all the power your Heavenly Father gives you 1 " 



LETTERS. 163 

[She was eighty-three years old when she wrote these words, and the 
next is from a letter written only a few months before her departure.] 

"I feel the faith we trust in is of God, and will by and by prevail. I 
pray he will send forth more and more earnest workers to join those 
already at work. I pray he will bless your endeavors more and more, 
and make your enthusiasm more and more contagious. 

I dare not expose myself in the least to these cold airs. I am so 
situated by the kind providence of my Heavenly Father, that I can be 
careful, and I feel I should be ungrateful not to do so. 

Her last letter to me : 

Newton, July 29, 1899. 

. . . My interest in all good works is as great as ever, but now I 
must choose carefully what lines I take up. I enclose check for fifty 
dollars, and shall pray earnestly great good will attend the gathering at 
Saratoga, and the very spirit of the old Pentecostal day may hover over 
all the meetings. With kind remembrance to Mrs. Shinn and your sons, 
yours ever with esteem and respect, trusting the Heavenly Father may 
keep you in health and strength to carry forward his work. 

Mrs. M. T. Goddard. 

Note. — Every letter she ever wrote me was closed with a tender benediction, and 
not two of them alike. Every word I have quoted is in her own hand, plain as print. 

MRS. GODDARD'S EIGHTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY.i 

Fourscore full years of life and more 

We talk about to-day, 
And what bright dreams and pleasant scenes 

They've borne with them away, 
For birthdays come and birthdays go, 

While ever busy Time 
Adds to his scroll one figure more, 

To those of " Auld Lang Syne." 

The past full many a picture shows 

Of landscapes bright and fair, 
And e'en the shade, by sorrow made, 

Mars not the beauty there. 

1 Written by Mrs. Mary T. Goddard for her eighty-third birthday, and sung by her- 
self and guests at the dinner-table to the tune of " Auld Lang Syne.* One present at that 
occasion writes ; " I wish all who read it could have heard her happy voice above all the 
Others as we sang it on her last earthly birthday." — Universalist Leader. 



1 64 LETTERS. 

Birthdays may come and birthdays go, 

Still we will not repine, 
For blessings rich surround us now 

As in dear " Auld Lang Syne." 

So past and present both are ours, 

The praise of both we'll sing, 
While these loved friends their voices lend 

To make the echoes ring. 
Let birthdays come and birthdays go, 

Peace shall around us shine, 
We'll join the pleasures of to-day 

With those of "Auld Lang Syne." 



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